CURRENTS  AND  EDDIES 

IN  THE 

ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 


Currents  and  Eddies 


in 


th( 


English  Romantic  Generation 


By  Frederick  E.  Pierce,  Ph.D, 

Assistant  Professor  of  English  iiy' 
Yale  University 


J\Vw  Haven 

Yale  University  Press 

London:  Humphrey  Milford 

Oxford  University  Press 

Mdccccxviii 


COPYRIGHT  1918,  BY 
YALE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS. 


PUBLISHED  ON  THE  FOUNDATION 
.  ESTABLISHED  IN  MEMORY  OF 
HENRY  WELDON  BARNES 
OF  THE  CLASS  OF  1882,  YALE  COLLEGE 


The  present  volume  is  the  sixth  work  published  by  the  Yale  University 
Press  on  the  Henry  Weldon  Barnes  Memorial  Publication  Fund.  This 
Foimdation  was  established  June  16,  19 13,  by  a  gift  made  to  Yale  Univer- 
sity by  the  late  William  Henry  Barnes,  Esq.,  of  Philadelphia,  in  memory 
of  his  son,  a  member  of  the  Class  of  1882,  Yale  College,  who  died  December 
3,  1882.  While  a  student  at  Yale,  Henry  Weldon  Barnes  was  greatly 
interested  in  the  study  of  literature  and  in  the  literary  activities  of  the 
college  of  his  day,  contributing  articles  to  some  of  the  undergraduate 
papers  and  serving  on  the  editorial  board  of  the  Yale  Record.  It  had  been 
his  hope  and  expectation  that  he  might  in  after  life  devote  himself  to 
literary  work.  His  untimely  death  prevented  the  realization  of  his  hopes; 
but  by  the  establishment  of  the  Henry  Weldon  Barnes  Memorial 
Publication  Fimd  his  name  will  nevertheless  be  forever  associated  with 
the  cause  of  scholarship  and  letters  which  he  planned  to  serve  and  which 
he  loved  so  well. 


Q  O  O  O  cr  A 


PREFACE 

If  literary  history  is  exclusively  the  interpretation  of  great  literature, 
it  should  confine  itself  to  masters  and  masterpieces.  But  if  it  be  also 
a  lesson  from  past  ages  for  our  own,  it  must  interpret  those  minor 
figures  who,  more  than  the  giants,  because  they  are  more  numerous 
and  pliant,  form  the  thought  currents  of  the  day.  And  if,  further, 
history  be  a  panorama  of  the  human  drama  called  life,  who  would 
reject  entirely  the  comedy  of  the  vain  poetaster  or  the  tragedy  of 
the  broken  minor  who  was,  the  great  poet  who  might  have  been? 
We  make  no  pretence  of  having  allotted  space  to  each  author  in 
exact  proportion  to  his  literary  merits,  and  we  know  that  we  have 
mentioned  several  people  whom  it  is  better  to  read  about  than  to 
read.  But  it  was  only  by  this  means,  we  thought,  that  we  could 
present  a  brilliant  transitional  age  in  its  habit  as  it  lived.  If  we  have 
said  more  about  the  environment  of  poets  than  about  the  magic 
qualities  of  their  verse,  it  is  because  the  latter  task  has  already  been 
so  well  done  by  Professor  Beers,  Professor  Elton,  Mr.  Arthur 
Symons,  and  others.  May  this  book  throw  a  little  light  on  those 
ill-understood  forces  at  work  in  life,  some  for  the  encouragement — 
too  many  for  the  destruction — of  incipient  poetry. 

F.  E.  P. 
August,  191 8. 


[  7  ] 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction ii 

PART  I 

English  Literature  during  the  French  Revolution  and  the  Career 
oj  Napoleon  J  lySg-iSis 


Chapter 

I. 

Popular  Taste  and  Tendencies,  1 789-1804  . 

19 

Chapter 

II. 

The   Eddy   Around   Bristol;    Rousseau   and   the 

French  Revolution  in  Poetry,  1 794-1 799  . 

43 

Chapter 

III. 

The  Scotch  Group  and  the  Antiquarian  Movement 

in  Poetry,  1800- 1805  and  thereafter 

68 

Chapter 

IV. 

Poets  and  Authors  of  the  Lakes 

89 

Chapter 

V. 

The  Popular  Supremacy  of  Scott,  1805-1812 

112 

Chapter 

VI. 

The  London  Society  Poets:  The  Popular  Suprem- 

acy of  Byron,  1812-1820       .... 

128 

PART  II 

English  Literature  from  the  Downfall  of  Napoleon  to  the  Rise 

of  Tennyson,  1816-1830 

Chapter 

VII. 

The  Scotch  Era  of  Prose,  18 14- 1830  . 

151 

Chapter 

VIII. 

The  Eddy  Around  Leigh  Hunt  .... 

163 

Chapter 

IX. 

The  Elizabethan  Current  and  The  London  Maga- 

zine  

186 

Chapter 

X. 

The  Expatriated  Poets  and  the  Italian  Movement 

in  Poetry 

212 

Chapter 

XI. 

Popular  Taste  and  Minor  Tendencies,  181 5-1 830 

239 

Chapter 

XII. 

Forty  Years  of  Satire,  Parody,  and  Burlesque 

PART  III 

General  Discussions 

265 

Chapter '. 

XIII. 

Romanticism,  Classicism,  and  Realism 

28,7 

Chapter '. 

XIV. 

The  Survival  of  the  Fittest        .... 

304 

[9] 

INTRODUCTION 

•» 
Between  1795  and  1820  there  was  among  German  authors  an  easily 
traceable  movement,  known  as  that  of  the  Romantische  Schule,, It 
had  a  definite  propaganda,  a  definite  body  of  contemporary  enemies, 
created  a  definite  type  of  literature;  and  in  spite  of  rather  undig- 
nified civil  strife  among  its  different  camps  during  the  period  of 
decline,  it  had  in  general  a  social  unity  and  organization  like  that  of 
a  political  party.  Still  more  was  this  true  of  the  romantic  movement 
in  France  between  1820  and  1840.  There  Victor  Hugo  organized  and 
rallied  his  literary  followers  like  a  political  leader;  and  the  militant 
romanticist  cried:  "He  who  is  not  for  me  is  against  me."  The  line 
of  demarcation  between  romanticist  and  classicist  was  clearly  drawn, 
and  the  main  unquestioned  line  of  cleavage. 

Some  of  the  same  forces  which  produced  these  movements  on  the 
continent  were  at  work  in  England.  Yet  the  resulting  phenomena 
were  different.  The  Anglo-Saxon  mind  is  in  many  ways  centrifugal 
where  French  or  German  tendencies  are  centripetal.  In  a  matter  like 
literature,  where  there  is  no  great  external  danger  to  repress  its 
natural  inclination,  it  does  not  lend  itself  readily  to  a  nation-wide, 
homogeneous  reform;  and  for  this  reason  one  finds  in  England  a 
romantic  generation:, -a  gradual  evolution  in  taste;  but  no  one  domi- 
nant romantic  movement.  Instead  there  were  a  series  of  minor  im- 
pulses or  camps,  often  hostile  to  each  other,  all  presenting  certain 
elements  which  critics  have  called  "romantic"  mixed  with  others 
which  are  doubtfully  so.  As  a  result,  no  matter  what  definition  of 
romanticism  be  adopted,  it  is  impossible  to  make  the  cleavage 
between  romantic  and  unromantic  poetry  coincide  with  the  line  of 
division  created  by  social  affiliations  or  by  conflicting  theories  of 
literary  art.  Would  not  every  one  call  the  "Christabel"  of  Coleridge 
and  the  "Giaour"  of  Byron  romantic?  Yet  Coleridge  and  Byron 

[  II  ] 


INTRODUCTION 

belonged  to  different  literary  camps,  at  times  condemned  each  other's 
poetry,  and  preached  different  critical  theories.  Keats  was  a  romantic 
poet;  yet  the  most  savage  review  that  he  ever  received  appeared  in 
Blackwood's,  a  magazine  favorable  to  romantic  criticism  and  well 
filled  with  romantic  fiction. 

Hence,  gentle  reader — and  ungentle  reviewer — we  endeavor  to 
drop,  as  far  as  possible,  the  words  "romanticism"  and  "classicism" 
and  to  study  the  phenomena  of  the  so-called  romantic  generation  as 
those  of  an  age  marked  by  great  variations  in  taste  and  by  varying 
tendencies  in  creative  work.  The  words  "romanticism"  and  "roman- 
tic school"  were  often  used  by  French  and  German  writers  of  the 
early  nineteenth  century  to  describe  their  own  literatures,  and  by 
English  writers  describing  continental  authors;  but — and  this  is 
significant — those  terms  were  rarely  employed,  by  Englishmen  of 
that  period  describing  any  one  social  circle  among  their  own  con- 
temporary writers.  They  constantly  spoke  of  landscapes  as  roman- 
tic, often  of  some  book  as  a  romantic  work,  but  almost  never  of  any 
group  of  writers  as  "the  romantic  group."  Instead  of  Die  Roman- 
tiker  or  Les  romantiques  Englishmen  referred  to  "The  Lake  Poets," 
"The  Scotch  Poets,"  "The  Cockney  Group,"  "The  Suburban  Group," 
and  "The  New  School  of  Poetry."  Such  labeling,  however  inaccurate 
in  details,  recognized  the  central  fact  that  English  poetry  was  being 
shaped,  not  by  one  movement,  but  by  several;  and  that,  even  when 
a  common  thread  of  romanticism  can  be  traced  across  them,  it  lies 
tangent  to  a  number  of  circles,  not  coincident  with  any  one.  Is  it  not, 
then,  desirable  to  resurrect  the  attitude  of  the  romantic  generation 
toward  itself,  to  trace  these  different  minor  movements,  to  point  out 
the  lines  of  division  between  them  with  such  differences  as  existed  in 
the  character  of  their  poetry,  and  to  explain  these  differences,  as  far 
as  seems  reasonable,  by  the  effect  of  social  and  geographical  environ- 
ment, of  racial  instincts,  and  of  other  forming  influences?  If  such  a 
procedure  jars  on  any  one  as  too  scientific,  too  contrary  to  the  sub- 
jective workings  of  the  poetic  temperament,  we  can  only  answer  in 
the  words  of  the  most  purely  lyric  mind  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
"Poets,"  wrote  Shelley,  "the  best  of  them,  are  a  very  cameleonic 
race;  they  take  the  colour  not  only  of  what  they  feed  on,  but  of  the 

[    12    ] 


INTRODUCTION 

very  leaves  under  which  they  pass."  Byron  must  have  believed  the 
same  when  he  wrote: 

And  as  the  soil  is,  so  the  heart  of  man. 

Our  interest  lies  mainly  in  the  years  between  1790  and  1830; 
but  a  brief  glance  at  literary  tendencies  in  the  preceding  century 
is  a  necessary  preliminary.  The  school  of  Pope,  which  monopolized 
English  poetry  before  1720  and  was  probably  the  most  power- 
ful single  influence  for  nearly  a  century  after  that  date,  was  essen- 
tially urban,  like  the  French  neo-classicism  from  which  it  derived 
and  which  had  originated  in  Paris,  the  most  cosmopolitan  city  of 
Europe.  It  is  true  that  the  Augustan  couplet  became  a  social  fad, 
and  as  such  produced  occasional  fifth-rate  poetasters  in  Highland 
wilds  or  western  colonies;  but  the  Pope  imitators  rarely  achieved 
even  third-rate  excellence  except  around  London.  They  had  little  to 
do  with  either  the  rural  districts  or  the  smaller  provincial  cities. 
The  Pope  tradition,  though  it  overawed  all  Great  Britain  for  a  cen- 
tury and  a  half,  was  essentially  a  London  tradition,  elsewhere  a 
theory  much  reverenced  and  little  or  clumsily  practiced,  in  the  great 
metropolis  a  living  force  even  eighty  years  after  the  death  of  its 
founder.  Edinburgh,  though  it  had  many  critical  advocates  for  Pope, 
produced  little  good  poetry  in  his  vein.  Of  the  eighteenth-century 
poems  in  J.  G.  Wilson's  "Poets  and  Poetry  of  Scotland,"  only  a  small 
minority  are  in  the  couplet.  Blank  verse,  ballad  metre,  and  Spense- 
rian stanza  predominate.  Even  of  the  work  in  Pope's  metre  given 
there,  much  is  unlike  him  in  spirit  and  manner;  he  can  claim,  at  best, 
only  a  superficial  connection  with  the  homely  cottage  atmosphere 
of  Ramsay  or  the  ocean  breezes  and  adventures  of  Falconer. 

The  varied  human  background  must  be  remembered  in  studying 
literary  currents  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Before  1740  practically 
all  ^^romantic"  or  un-Popean  verse  of  merit  came  either  from  the 
wild  landscapes  of  Scotland,  which  Wordsworth  called,  "not  except- 
ing the  Alps,  the  most  poetical  country  I  ever  traveled  through,"  or 
from  the  Celtic  blood  of  Wales  and  Ireland.  Parnell  was  an  Irish- 
man, in  whose  "Fairy  Tale"  and  "Night  Piece  on  Death"  the  Celtic 
temperament  shook  its  neo-classic  dykes.  Dyer,  whose  "Grongar 

[  13  ] 


INTRODUCTION 

Hill"  is  so  unlike  Pope's  pallid  pentameter  pastorals,  was  Welsh,  and 
James  Thomson  a  Scotch  country  boy,  raised  amid  the  scenery  that 
later  encouraged  the  Waverley  novels.  His  "Seasons,"  though  written 
in  England,  is  redolent  of  the  north.  Blair,  author  of  "The  Grave," 
a  poem  in  which  heavy  didacticism  and  fitful  bursts  of  uncannily 
suggestive  poetry  are  strangely  mingled,  was  a  Scotch  clergyman. 

Even  after  1 740  the  new  types  of  poetry  flourished  best  north  of 
the  Tweed.  Beattie,  whose  "Minstrel"  first  made  the  sentimental- 
medieval  poem  popular,  was  the  countryman  of  Thomson;  and 
Macpherson,  author  of  those  Ossianic  adaptations  which  leavened 
the  literatures  of  all  western  Europe,  was  a  Gaelic  Highlander.  John 
Home — whose  medieval  "Douglas,"  with  its  romantic  lost  heir,  held 
the  stage  for  over  half  a  century — was  Scotch.  The  folk  poetry 
which  Thomas  Percy  edited  in  his  epoch-making  "Reliques"  came 
chiefly  from  the  border  region  between  Yorkshire  and  Edinburgh. 
It  was  the  northern  kingdom  that  crowned  all  by  producing  Burns 
with  the  wild  witchery  of  "Tam  O'Shanter"  and  the  rollicking 
realism  of  "The  Jolly  Beggars."  What  "unclassical"  poetry  was 
produced  in  England  before  1780  was  largely  a  by-product  of 
scholarly  thought  in  the  great  universities;  Oxford  contributing  the 
medieval  poems  of  Thomas  Warton,  and  Cambridge  the  Welsh  and 
Scandinavian  translations  of  Gray.  Collins,  Cowper,  and  Chatterton, 
though  English,  were  not  London  men  by  birth,  literary  training, 
or  inspiration;  their  brief  residences  in  the  great  metropolis  brought 
to  the  first  two  bitterness  and  disillusion — to  the  last  tragedy.  "I 
live  here  almost  at  a  distance  of  sixty  miles  from  London,  which  I 
have  not  visited  these  eight-and-twenty  years,  and  probably  never 
shall  again,"  wrote  Cowper  in  the  height  of  his  literary  fame. 
Blake's  body,  it  is  true,  was  in  the  metropohs  but  his  soul  in  "eter- 
nity." Up  to  the  very  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  medievalism, 
lyric  passion,  and  poetical  nature  worship  belonged  to  the  outlying 
regions.  Meanwhile  in  London  Johnson,  Goldsmith,  and  Churchill 
kept  the  old  tradition  of  pentameter  couplet,  moralizing,  and  satire, 
unbroken.  There  would  be  a  reasonable  amount  of  truth — though 
not  scientific  accuracy  of  statement — in  comparing  the  Pope  School 
to  a  literary  invasion  from  France,  which  conquered  much  the  same 

[  14  ] 


INTRODUCTION 

ground  as  Agricola  and  his  Romans,  then  was  gradually  pushed 
backward  from  the  north  and  west,  but  held  firmly  in  its  fortress  by 
the  Thames  almost  until  Tennyson^s  day. 

It  was  the  natural  outcome  of  eighteenth-century  tendencies  that 
the  beginnings  of  the  great  nineteenth-century  poetry  appeared 
on  the  very  outskirts  of  Engl^^roper,  on  the  Scotch  border,  in 
the  neighboring  Lake  region,  c^Hrnd  Bristol  in  the  west  at  the  edge 
of  Wales.  Scott,  Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  and  Southey  wrote  on  a 
literary  frontier.  Not  only  did  it  mark  the  limit  where  Pope's  in- 
fluence among  creative  geniuses  had  always  grown  weak,  but  it 
marked  also  the  division  between  a  country  peopled  almost  wholly 
by  Anglo-Saxons  and  outlying  districts  with  a  strong  infusion  of 
Celtic  or  Scandinavian  blood.  Scott  led  an  incursion  from  the  rugged 
and  martial  north  in  the  track  of  Thomson,  Beattie,  Home,  and 
Macpherson;  Coleridge  one  from  the  mystery-haunted  west  of  the 
Celt  in  the  steps  of  Parnell,  Dyer,  and  Chatterton.  Before  discussing 
the  early  writing  of  these  great  innovators,  however,  it  will  be  neces- 
sary to  review  other  works  of  their  time,  much  inferior  in  merit,  but 
far  more  in  the  public  eye  during  the  year  of  our  Lord  eighteen 
hundred. 


[  15  ] 


# 


PART  I 

ENGLISH  LITERATURE  DURING  THE  FRENCH 

REVOLUTION  AND  THE  CAREER  OF 

NAPOLEON,  1789-1815 


CHAPTER  I 

Popular  Taste  and  Tendencies y  1789-- 1804 


Sharp  and  dramatic  is  the  distinction  between  literary  movements  in 
the  creative  work  of  genius  and  literary  movements  in  popular  taste. 
In  both  fields  changes  are  forever  going  on;  sometimes  along  parallel 
lines,  as  when  Lamartine's  richly  lyrical  "Meditations  Poetiques" 
sold  forty  thousand  copies  in  France  in  ten  years;  sometimes  along 
lines  woefully  divergent,  as  when  Shelley's  noble  lyrics  were  over- 
looked by  a  world  eager  for  the  sugared  trash  of  Letitia  Landon; 
sometimes  of  two  simultaneous  great  creative  movements  one  coin- 
cides with  the  new  wave  of  popular  feeling  and  the  other  not,  as 
when  Scott's  "Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel"  became  a  best  seller  while 
Wordsworth's  "Ode  on  the  Intimations  of  Immortality"  obtained 
from  his  audience  nothing  but  "a  sleep  and  a  forgetting."  Popular 
movements,  unlike  creative  ones,  seldom  have  an  artistic  interest, 
but  they  have  a  pronounced  psychological  one;  literary  history  as  an 
interpretation  of  great  masterpieces  ignores  them,  but  literary  his- 
tory as  a  study  of  the  human  mind  learns  from  them  how  man,  proud 
man,  tricked  out  in  a  little  brief  applause. 

Plays  such  fantastic  tricks  before  high  Heaven, 
As  make  the  angels  weep. 

The  initial  work  of  the  first  great  nineteenth-century  poets  only 
in  a  slight  degree  represented  the  prevailing  taste  of  the  time  or 
appealed  to  it.  To  learn  what  books  the  general  public  liked  during 
those  eventful  years  from  1790  to  1804  we  must  open  volumes  long 
since  thick  with  the  dust  of  oblivion. 

Of  popular  poetry  heralding  the  new  age,  very  little  appeared  for 

[  19  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

the  first  time  between  1790  and  1800,  but  several  such  poems,  first 
launched  in  the  preceding  decade,  were  going  from  edition  to  edition, 
and  molding  the  general  taste.  The  sonnet,  which  had  been  revived 
by  Warton,  became  a  best  seller  in  the  hands  of  Mrs.  Charlotte 
Smith,  whose  little  fourteen-line  sheaves  of  lacrymosity  ran  through 
nine  editions  between  1784  and  1800.  An  illustrated  edition  the  year 
before  the  "Lyrical  Ballads"  numbered  among  its  subscribers  the 
archbishop  of  Canterbury,  Cowper,  Charles  James  Fox,  Horace 
Walpole,  Mrs.  Siddons,  and  both  the  Wartons.  Mrs.  Smith  led  a 
hard  and  industrious  life.  She  brought  into  the  world  twelve  children 
and  a  somewhat  larger  number  of  novels,  both  types  of  offspring 
being  now  equally  dead.  In  her  sonnets  a  few  drops  of  genuine 
poetry  are  lost  in  a  bath  of  tears.  What  she  said  of  Solitude  the 
reader  would  like  to  say  of  her: 

Amidst  thy  wild-woods,  and  untrodden  glades, 
No  sounds  but  those  of  melancholy  move; 

And  the  low  winds  that  die  among  thy  shades. 
Seem  like  soft  Pity's  sighs  for  hopeless  love! 

In  1 789  another  disciple  of  Warton,  William  Bowles,  first  printed 
sonnets  that  ran  to  five  editions  in  six  years,  and  exercised  a  marked 
influence  on  the  young  authors  afterwards  known  as  "the  Lake 
Poets."  His  effusions  are  much  better  than  those  of  Charlotte  Smith; 
but  we  question  whether  the  general  public  realized  that.  It  found 
in  both  the  same  wind  sighing  through  the  withered  leaves,  the  same 
mellow  pentameter  sighing  through  withered  hopes;  and  it  bought 
and  praised,  and  asked  nothing  further.  In  fact,  though  Bowles  is 
more  genuine  and  musical,  he  seems  at  times  like  an  echo  of  his 
sister  in  popularity: 

There  is  strange  music  in  the  stirring  wind. 
When  lowers  the  autumnal  eve,  and  all  alone 
To  the  dark  wood's  cold  covert  thou  art  gone, 

Whose  ancient  trees  on  the  rough  slope  reclined 
Rock,  and  at  times  scatter  their  tresses  sear. 

"Charlotte  Smith  and  Bowles  are  they  who  first  made  the  sonnet 
popular  among  the  present  English."  So  wrote  Coleridge  in  1797  in 

[  20  ] 


POPULAR  TASTE  AND  TENDENCIES 

the  Introduction  to  his  own  imitations  of  Bowles.  It  is  something  to 
see  a  nation  reawakened  to  the  value  of  a  noble  verse  form,  even  if 
inadequately  handled. 

During  the  same  period  one  truly  great  poem  was  widely  popular, 
Cowper's  "Task."  Originally  printed  in  1785,  it  was  running  through 
edition  after  edition  during  the  last  decade  of  the  century,  and  is  said 
to  have  netted  the  publisher  some  £10,000.  Within  six  years  an 
American  edition  appeared  in  New  York.  It  is  a  strange  thing  amid 
all  the  fictitious  woes  of  that  tearful  period  that  so  wholesome  and 
calm  a  poem  should  come  from  the  greatest  sufferer  of  the  age; 
stranger  yet  that  the  public  which  liked  Charlotte  Smith  and  Hayley 
liked  even  better  this  revelation  of  the  divine  in  humble  life.  William 
Gilpin  in  pamphlet  after  pamphlet  was  preaching  the  beauty  of 
natural  scenery;  Methodism  was  spreading  and  increasing  the  reli- 
gious emotion  to  which  Cowper  so  powerfully  though  unostenta- 
tiously appealed;  and  "The  Task"  met  these  new  needs  without 
jarring  on  the  old  conventions.  Charlotte  Smith  in  1793  published 
a  very  bad  imitation  of  it,  and  in  her  Preface  waxed  enthusiastic 
over  the  hour  "when,  in  the  Parliament  of  England,  the  greatest 
Orator  of  our  time  quoted  the  sublimest  of  our  Poets — when  the 
eloquence  of  Fox  did  justice  to  the  genius  of  Cowper." 

The  division  between  popular  and  unpopular  poetry  did  not  at  all 
run  parallel  to  the  division  between  "romantic"  and  "neo-classical" 
verse.  While  Cowper  was  on  every  tongue,  the  wild,  splendid  lyrics 
of  William  Blake  were  falling  from  his  improvised  press  utterly 
unheeded.  While  the  medieval  picturesque  was  everywhere  wel- 
comed in  Bowles,  the  medieval  poems  of  Chatterton,  according  to 
Coleridge,  "were  never  popular.  .  .  .  The  sale  was  never  very 
great."  Burns  was  having  a  decided  vogue  in  Lowland  Scotland,  but 
no  such  national  success  as  the  author  of  "The  Task."  The  neo- 
classical early  poems  of  Cowper  fell  dead,  while  those  of  lesser  con- 
temporaries sold  everywhere.  What  the  public  demanded  was  the 
sentimental  and  the  obvious,  free  from  unusual  language  or  mystic 
thought,  with  a  decent  pretence  of  respect,  at  least,  for  the  old 
literary  conventions. 

[  21  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

n 

'^'"After  1790  far-reaching  influences  on  poetry  overflowed  from  two 
other  popular  currents:  the  modified  Pope  tradition,  and  German 
or  Gothic  melodrama.  The  Pope  tradition,  which  ran  lucid  and 
sparkling  in  earlier  years,  grew  turbid  and  tear-stained  now;  but 
it  kept  the  time-hallowed  couplet,  it  was  either  moralizing  or  satiri- 
cal; and,  whatever  Pope  himself  would  have  thought,  authors  and 
readers  aHke  believed  that  it  was  modeled  on  him. 

In  the  south  of  England  William  Hayley,  the  friend  of  Cowper 
and  well-meaning  but  very  patronizing  patron  of  Blake,  between 
1775  and  1785  produced  a  series  of  poems  in  this  vein.  Despite 
hollow  echoes  of  new  influences,  there  is  no  question  about  his  con- 
scious discipleship  in  following  the  author  of  "The  Dunciad,"  whom 
he  sees 

tho^  formed  to  fill  the  epic  throne, 
Decline  the  sceptre  of  that  wide  domain, 
To  bear  a  Lictor's  rod  in  Satire's  train. 

A  modern  ear  can  scarcely  endure  these  didactic  couplets,  chiming 
on  drearily  about  painting,  epic  poetry,  married  life,  and  the  joys 
of  a  placid  disposition;  yet  they  gave  the  author  a  decided  vogue 
for  some  years  at  the  very  time  when  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge 
were  beginning  to  write.  Hayley 's  best-known  poem,  "The  Triumphs 
of  Temper,"  published  in  1781,  had  reached  a  twelfth  edition  by 
1803.  "His  observation  of  the  various  effects  of  spleen  on  the 
female  character,  induced  him  to  believe  that  he  might  render  an 
important  service  to  social  life,  if  his  poetry  could  induce  his  young 
and  fair  readers  to  cultivate  the  gentle  qualities  of  the  heart,  and 
maintain  a  constant  flow  of  good  humor.  With  this  view  he  composed 
his  ^Triumphs  of  Temper,'  and  the  success  of  it  appears  to  have 
been  fully  equal  to  his  most  sanguine  expectations.  He  has  been 
heard  to  declare,  that  the  sweetest  reward  he  ever  received  as  an 
author,  was  a  cordial  declaration  from  a  very  good  and  sensible 
mother  of  a  large  family,  that  she  was  truly  indebted  to  the  work 
in  question,  for  an  absolute  and  delightful  reformation  in  the  con- 
duct and  character  of  her  eldest  daughter."  Hayley  was  a  powerful, 

[  22  ] 


POPULAR  TASTE  AND  TENDENCIES 

hard-riding  athlete,  utterly  unlike  his  verse,  which  was  obviously 
the  result  of  a  convention,  not  a  conviction.  "He  had  his  day,  too, 
poor  man,"  was  Mary  Mitford's  comment  in  1811.  "But  the  wonder 
with  him  is,  not  that  he  was  dethroned,  but  that  he  was  ever  elevated 
to  the  high  seat  of  poesy." 

Meanwhile  in  central  England  the  altar  of  Pope  burned  brightly 
for  the  literary  coterie  at  Lichfield:  Thomas  Day,  the  author  of 
"Sandford  and  Merton,"  Anna  Seward,  the  Swan  of  Lichfield, 
Erasmus  Darwin,  and  their  friends.  One  year  after  "The  Triumphs 
of  Temper"  appeared  "Louisa:  a  Poetical  Novel,"  by  Anna  Seward. 
It  exhibited  a  mawkish  sentimentality  that  the  author  of  "The 
Dunciad"  would  have  loathed  and  lashed,  yet  resulted,  according 
to  the  authoress,  "from  an  idea  of  it  being  possible  to  unite  the 
impassioned  fondness  of  Pope's  ^Eloisa'  with  the  chaster  tenderness 
of  Prior's  'Emma.' " 

Now  glooms  on  the  stain'd  page  the  barbarous  Truth, 
And  blights  each  blooming  promise  of  my  youth! 
EuGENio  married! — ^Anguish,  and  Despair, 
In  ev'ry  pompous  killing  letter  glare! 

Yet  this  precious  stuff  ran  through  five  editions  in  a  decade,  the 
last  appearing  shortly  before  Wordsworth's  "Evening  Walk";  and 
Southey  tells  us  that  in  1796  the  Swan  of  Lichfield  was  "in  high 
reputation."  Even  in  1807  she  quoted  with  apparent  approval  the 
astounding  dictum  of  Thomas  Day,  "that  Pope's  Homer  was,  as 
poetry,  very  superior  to  its  original." 

Erasmus  Darwin,  grandfather  of  the  famed  expounder  of  evolu- 
tion, had  a  far  more  commanding  intellect  than  Hayley,  but  was 
hardly  a  better  poet.  Being  an  enthusiastic  scientist,  he  personified 
flowers  and  other  natural  forces  and  told  the  story  of  their  fancied 
loves  with  ponderous  gambols  of  his  great  but  unpoetical  mind  like 
the  mirth-provoking  antics  of  Milton's  elephant.  In  metre  and  didac- 
ticism he  was  of  the  school  of  Pope;  but  that  sane  and  tasteful 
genius  would  have  shuddered  to  own  his  child.  It  was  thus  that 
Darwin  painted  amours  between  vegetables  in  his  "Loves  of  The 
Plants"  (1789): 

[  23  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

With  charms  despotic  fair  Chondrilla  reigns 
O'er  the  soft  hearts  of  five  fraternal  swains; 
If  sighs  the  changeful  nymph,  alike  they  mourn; 
And,  if  she  smiles,  with  rival  raptures  burn. 

In  him  "poetic  diction,"  reinforced  by  grandiose  and  technical  scien- 
tific expressions,  becomes  a  purulent  disease,  which  must  have  gone 
far  in  drawing  from  Wordsworth  those  famous  Prefaces  a  decade 
later. 

Ere  Time  began,  from  flaming  Chaos  hurl'd 

Rose  the  bright  spheres  which  form  the  circling  world; 

Earths  from  each  sun  with  quick  explosions  burst, 

And  second  planets  issued  from  the  first. 

Then,  whilst  the  sea  at  their  coeval  birth. 

Surge  over  surge,  involved  the  shoreless  earth; 

Nurs'd  by  warm  sun-beams  in  primeval  caves 

Organic  life  began  beneath  the  waves. 

First  heat  from  chemic  dissolution  springs. 

And  gives  to  matter  its  eccentric  wings; 

With  strong  repulsion  parts  the  exploding  mass, 

Melts  into  lymph  or  kindles  into  gas. 

Darwin's  poems  had  no  such  sale  as  those  of  Hayley  and  others  to  be 
mentioned  later — though  they  sold  much  better  than  "Lyrical 
Ballads" — but  they  were  widely  known  and  discussed.  Ten  years 
after  the  first  of  them  appeared,  literary  men  considered  it  an  honor 
to  the  young  poet  Campbell  to  call  him  "the  Erasmus  Darwin  of 
Edinburgh."  Horace  Walpole  found  in  them  "twelve  verses"  which 
he  thought  "the  most  sublime  passages  in  any  author,  or  in  any  of 
the  few  languages  with  which  I  am  acquainted."  With  different  feel- 
ings toward  the  popular  favorite,  William  Taylor  in  1796  warned 
Scott  that  "this  age  leans  too  much  to  the  Darwin  style." 

While  Hayley,  Seward,  and  Darwin  were  being  humorous  in  an 
attempt  to  be  serious,  intentional  wit  in  what  seemed  at  least  the 
same  literary  channel  was  carrying  the  market  by  storm,  "The  Rol- 
liad,"  published  1784  and  afterwards,  and  not  in  complete  form  until 
1795,  exhausted  twenty-one  editions  before  the  end  of  the  century. 
This  work  is  at  once  a  burlesque  of  the  bad  Pope  imitations,  and  an 

[  24] 


POPULAR  TASTE  AND  TENDENCIES 

example  of  the  good  ones.  It  is  a  long,  mock-heroic  criticism  in  prose 
of  an  imaginary  epic,  ^'The  Rolliad,"  in  heroic  couplets.  Plentiful 
extracts  from  the  supposed  poem  are  quoted,  none  of  them  with 
Pope's  stylistic  finish,  but  many  delicious  take-offs,  others  full  of 
pungent  satire,  as  in  the  lines  on  George  Selwyn. 

A  plenteous  magazine  of  retail  wit 
Vamp'd  up  at  leisure  for  some  future  hit; 
Cut  for  supposed  occasions,  like  the  trade, 
Where  old  new  things  for  every  shape  are  made. 

The  opening  passage  is  typical  of  the  whole  work.  "Nothing  can  be 
more  consonant  to  the  advice  of  Horace  and  Aristotle,  than  the  con- 
duct of  our  author  throughout  this  poem.  .  .  .  The  poem  opens  with 
a  most  labored  and  masterly  description  of  a  storm.  Rollo's  state  of 
mind  in  this  arduous  situation  is  finely  painted: 

Now  Rollo  storms  more  loudly  than  the  wind, 
Now  doubts  and  black  despair  perplex  his  mind; 
Hopeless  to  see  his  vessel  safely  harbored, 
He  hardly  knows  his  starboard  from  his  larboard. 

That  a  hero  in  distress  should  not  know  his  right  hand  from  his  left, 
is  most  natural  and  affecting." 

Between  1794  and  1797  there  was  published  in  installments  an 
anonymous  poem  called  "The  Pursuits  of  Literature."  It  was  the 
work  of  a  T.  J.  Mathias,  and  may,  says  Professor  Courthope,  "be 
taken  as  a  faithful  mirror  of  the  dominant  literary  taste  of  English 
Society  during  the  war  with  revolutionary  France."  That  the  mantle 
of  Pope  had  fallen  upon  its  author — and  proved  something  of  a  mis- 
fit— is  proved  by  such  lines  as  the  following: 

Still  be  your  knowledge  temperate  and  discreet. 
Though  not  as  Jones  sublime,  as  Bryant  great. 
Prepared  to  prove,  in  Senate  or  the  Hall, 
That  States  by  learning  rise,  by  learning  fall. 

Thirteen  editions  of  this  poem  were  devoured  by  the  public  in  eleven 
years;  and  Be  Quincey  long  afterward  spoke  of  it  as  "a  celebrated 
satire,  much  read  in  my  youth."  A  few  months  after  the  publication 
of  "Lyrical  Ballads"  appeared  "The  Shade  of  Alexander  Pope  on 

[  25  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

the  Banks  of  the  Thames,"  "by  the  author  of  The  Pursuits  of  Lit- 
erature/ "  which  attained  the  honor  of  a  third  edition  in  one  year, 
while  "Tintern  Abbey"  and  'The  Ancient  Mariner"  would  not  sell 
to  the  amount  of  five  hundred  copies.  Pope's  amiable  ghost  is  repre- 
sented as  lamenting  the  good  old  days  of  Queen  Anne: 

Then  oft  with  Ministers  would  Genius  walk: 
Oxford  and  St.  John  loved  with  Swift  to  talk.  .  .  . 
But  in  these  dark,  forlorn,  distracted  days 
[which  were  producing  "Christabel"  and  the  "Lucy"  poems]   .  .  . 
Few  friends  are  found  for  poetry  and  wit. 

Aided  by  the  same  popular  wave,  Gifford's  "Baeviad"  and  "Mae- 
viad"  (1794  and  1795),  bitter  satires  against  the  Delia  Cruscan 
poets  in  the  manner  of  "The  Dunciad,"  required  an  eighth  edition 
by  1811. 

The  demand  for  Hayley  and  Miss  Seward  was,  no  doubt,  due  in 
large  part  to  their  cheap  sentimentality,  that  ever  salable  quality  in 
the  literary  market;  the  great  vogue  of  "The  Pursuits  of  Literature" 
was  unquestionably  assisted  by  its  personal  allusions;  but  none  the 
less  the  popular  success  of  these  poems  demonstrates  how  much 
the  general  reader  around  1800  relished  what  he  believed  to  be  the 
couplet  and  diction  of  Pope. 

Another  excellent  barometer  as  to  the  public  taste  is  found  in 
Robert  Bloomfield's  "Farmer's  Boy,"  which  sold  nearly  thirty  thou- 
sand copies  between  1800  and  1803.  A  plowman  by  early  environ- 
ment and  half -starved  tailor  by  trade,  Bloomfield  was  in  no  position 
to  analyze  the  poetic  demands  of  his  day.  For  once  he  stumbled 
blindly  on  success,  and  could  never  repeat  his  triumph.  In  his 
formerly  well-known  and  now  forgotten  poem  the  four  seasons 
wheel  round,  as  with  Thomson;  and,  as  with  Thomson,  there  is  much 
first-hand  observation  of  pastoral  life,  too  often  devitalized  by  pon- 
derous diction.  As  he  drew  on  Thomson  for  subject-matter,  so  he 
drew  on  the  Pope  imitators  for  verse  and  vocabulary;  and,  though 
at  times,  in  a  rather  wooden  way,  he  came  close  to  the  heart  of 
nature,  his  vogue  was  the  vogue  of  eighteenth-century  materials 
revamped. 

[  26  ] 


POPULAR  TASTE  AND  TENDENCIES 

Yet  Plenty  reigns,  and  from  her  boundless  hoard, 
Though  not  one  jelly  trembles  on  the  board. 
Supplies  the  feast  with  all  that  sense  can  crave; 
With  all  that  made  our  great  forefathers  brave, 
Ere  the  cloy'd  palate  countless  flavours  try'd, 
And  cooks  had  Nature's  judgment  set  aside. 
With  thanks  to  Heaven,  and  tales  of  rustic  lore, 
The  mansion  echoes  when  the  banquet's  o'er; 
A  wider  circle  spreads,  and  smiles  abound. 
As  quick  the  frothing  horn  performs  its  round; 
Care's  mortal  foe;  that  sprightly  joy  imparts 
To  cheer  the  frame  and  elevate  their  hearts. 

All  works  mentioned  hitherto  are  now  practically  forgotten,  and 
deservedly  so.  It  remains  to  consider  three  men  of  more  enduring 
reputation  who  first  won  the  public  ear  by  playing  in  the  approved 
manner,  though  with  some  new  notes,  on  the  Twick'nam  instrument. 
These  men  were  Crabbe,  Rogers,  and  Campbell.  Crabbe  published 
nothing  between  1785  and  1807,  the  period  now  under  discussion, 
but  he  was  a  prominent  writer  both  before  and  after  his  long  silence; 
and  his  "Village"  was  deservedly  popular  as  a  new  literary  star 
when  Wordsworth  began  writing.  Crabbe's  work  during  the  eight- 
eenth century  consisted  of  three  poems,  "The  Library"  (1781), 
"The  Village"  (1783),  and  "The  Newspaper"  (1785).  The  first 
and  last  of  these  were  dried-up  Pope  imitations,  didactic  or  satirical, 
which  deservedly  won  little  applause  for  their  mummified  charms. 
"The  Village"  is  a  masterpiece  in  its  own  harsh  type,  and,  being 
popular  from  the  first,  became  an  index  of  the  public  temper.  Certain 
critics  have  attempted  to  class  Crabbe  among  the  forerunners  of  the 
romantic  "Return  to  Nature,"  as  a  man  who,  unlike  the  Augustan 
pastoral  poets,  wrote  with  his  eye  on  the  object.  Whatever  may  be 
the  case  with  his  work  after  1807,  such  a  classification  of  his  earlier 
verse  is  highly  misleading.  "The  Library"  and  "The  Newspaper" 
contain  not  a  single  allusion  to  external  nature,  nor  is  there  anything 
about  it  in  "The  Village"  after  the  first  hundred  lines.  Readers  have 
often  drawn  a  wrong  impression  from  the  grim  accuracy  of  that 
opening  passage,  which  was  written  with  purely  satirical  aims,  to 

[  27  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

show  the  falseness  of  earlier  pastorals,  and  not  drawn  from  any 
spontaneous  delight  in  either  the  beauty  or  the  harshness  of  Nature 
per  se.  The  rest  of  the  poem  is  written  in  the  belief  that 

The  proper  study  of  mankind  is  man, 

and  examines  him  with  the  withering  disillusionment  of  Swift. 

Here,  wand'ring  long,  amid  these  frowning  fields, 
I  sought  the  simple  life  that  Nature  yields; 
Rapine  and  Wrong  and  Fear  usurp'd  her  place. 
And  a  bold,  artful,  surly,  savage  race, 

he  tells  us;  and  he  found  these  objects  of  Rousseau's  enthusiasm, 

only  skiird  to  take  the  finny  tribe. 
The  yearly  dinner,  or  septennial  bribe. 

The  doctor 

bids  the  gazing  throng  around  him  fly. 
And  carries  fate  and  physic  in  his  eye: 
A  potent  quack,  long  versed  in  human  ills. 
Who  first  insults  the  victim  whom  he  kills. 

The  rural  pastor  proves 

A  sportsman  keen,  he  shoots  through  half  the  day. 
And,  skill'd  at  whist,  devotes  the  night  to  play. 

Irregular  country  amours  have  for  Crabbe  none  of  the  glamour 
which  Burns  threw  around  .them. 

Near  her  the  swain,  about  to  bear  for  life 

One  certain  evil,  doubts  'twixt  war  and  wife; 

But,  while  the  faltering  damsel  takes  her  oath. 

Consents  to  wed,  and  so  secures  them  both.  4 

The  popular  success  of  "The  Village"  proved  the  still  unshaken 
supremacy  of  the  pure  Pope  tradition.  The  triumphs  of  Rogers  and 
Campbell  soon  after  showed  the  popularity  of  the  modified  Pope 
current,  where  metre  and  other  obvious  details  belonged  to  "the 
good  old"  convention,  and  the  subject-matter  mixed  Augustan 
moralizing  with  late  eighteenth-century  sentimentalism  or  touches 

[  28  ] 


POPULAR  TASTE  AND  TENDENaES 

of  romantic  interest  in  far  countries  and  revolutionary  efforts  for 
liberty.  These  poems,  like  Bloomfield's  "Farmer's  Boy,"  satisfied 
at  once  the  audience's  conventional  respect  for  the  old  and  its 
craving  for  the  new.  Rogers's  "Pleasures  of  Memory"  appeared  in 
1792,  and  eleven  editions,  the  last  six  of  one  thousand  copies  each, 
were  struck  off  before  1800.  The  Edinburgh  Review  said  of  it  in 
1813 :  "It  acquired  a  popularity,  originally  very  great,  and  which  has 
not  only  continued  amid  extraordinary  fluctuations  of  general  taste, 
but  increased  amidst  a  succession  of  formidable  competitors."  Over 
22,000  copies  of  it  had  been  put  on  the  market  by  181 6,  and  it  con- 
tinued a  general  favorite  until  after  Byron's  death.  It  is  easy  to 
understand  how  this  should  be.  "The  Pleasures  of  Memory"  is  a 
piece  of  charming  mediocrity.  Its  virtues  are  those  of  Esperanto  or 
any  other  universal  language;  it  expresses  no  deep  message  to  any 
one  but  has  some  meaning  for  everybody.  One  could  hardly  imagine 
a  poem,  launched  in  the  midst  of  contending  schools  and  tastes,  more 
calculated  to  please  both  God  and  Mammon.  To  the  lovers  of 
romantic  medievalism,  the  followers  of  Warton,  Beattie,  and  Hurd, 
the  author  tells  how 

the  stem  grandeur  of  a  Gothic  tower 
Awes  us  less  deeply  in  its  morning  hour. 
Than  when  the  shades  of  Time  serenely  fall 
On  every  broken  arch  and  ivied  wall. 

For  the  sentimentalist,  fresh  from  tear-stained  novel  or  comedy,  he 
has  lines  like  the  following: 

All,  all  escaped — ^but  ere  the  lover  bore 
His  faint  and  faded  Julia  to  the  shore, 
•  Her  sense  had  fled!  Exhausted  by  the  storm, 

A  fatal  trance  hung  o'er  her  pallid  form. 

It  was  not  for  nothing  that  Madame  D'Arblay  described  "The 
Pleasures  of  Memory"  as  "that  most  sweet  poem."  The  poet  leads 
the  lovers  of  natural  scenery  to  the  Lake  region  of  Wordsworth, 

Ere  the  rapt  youth,  recoiling  from  the  roar, 
Gazed  on  the  tumbling  tide  of  dread  Lodore. 

[  29] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

The  theme  of  his  poem,  un-Wordsworthian  as  it  is  in  most  respects, 
is  the  praise  of  emotion  "recollected  in  tranquility."  Its  chief  appeal, 
however,  was  to  the  still  numerous  admirers  of  neo-classicism,  to 
men  like  Adam  Smith,  who  two  years  before  its  publication  had 
cried  out  to  the  author,  "Sir,  there  has  been  but  one  Voltaire."  The 
metre  is  more  sweet  than  Pope's  and  with  less  twanging  power,  but 
obviously  modeled  on  "The  Essay  on  Man."  Eighteenth-century 
"poetic  diction"  is  everywhere  present.  The  closing  lines  sum  up  the 
author's  attitude  as  that  of  the  "Age  of  Reason." 

Lighter  than  air,  Hope's  summer  visions  die, 
If  but  a  fleeting  cloud  obscure  the  sky; 
If  but  a  beam  of  sober  Reason  play, 
Lo,  Fancy's  fairy  frost-work  melts  away! 
But  can  the  wiles  of  Art,  the  grasp  of  Power 
Snatch  the  rich  relics  of  a  well-spent  hour? 
These,  when  the  trembling  spirit  wings  her  flight, 
Pour  round  her  path  a  stream  of  living  light; 
And  gild  those  pure  and  perfect  realms  of  rest. 
Where  Virtue  triumphs,  and  her  sons  are  blest! 

In  Scotland,  though  many  critics  had  maintained  Pope's  theories 
with  true  Lowland  dogmatism  and  microscopic  versifiers  had  written 
in  his  couplet,  he  had  made  few  disciples  among  the  genuine  sons  of 
Apollo.  Consequently  there  is  a  touch  of  dramatic  irony  in  the  fact 
that  the  best  poem  in  his  vein  written  by  a  Scotchman  appeared  in 
the  last  year  of  the  eighteenth  century.  This  was  "The  Pleasures  of 
Hope"  by  Thomas  Campbell,  printed  when  he  was  only  twenty-one, 
and  the  greatest  popular  success  that  he  ever  achieved.  Several  large 
editions  of  it  were  sold  before  the  summer  of  1800.  "No  poem  had 
ever  met  with  a  more  flattering  reception,"  says  the  poet's  biogr^ 
pher.  "The  author  received  the  united  congratulations  of  eminent 
theologians,  lawyers,  and  historians.  ...  It  was  said  that  the  lover 
presented  it  to  his  mistress,  the  husband  to  his  wife,  the  mother  to 
her  daughter,  the  brother  to  his  sister;  and  that  it  was  recited  in 
public  lectures,  and  given  as  a  prize- volume  in  schools."  As  a  boy 
Campbell  had  come  under  various  romantic  influences,  including 
"Ossian";  but  for  some  years  before  writing  "The  Pleasures  of 

[  30  ] 


POPULAR  TASTE  AND  TENDENCIES 

Hope"  had  reverted  to  neo-classic  models.  Gray,  Goldsmith,  and 
Pope  were  his  favorite  authors;  and  he  followed  the  latter  so  slav- 
ishly in  his  undergraduate  poem  at  Glasgow  University,  "An  Essay 
on  the  Origin  of  Evil,"  that  his  fellows  for  some  time  called  him 
"the  Pope  of  Glasgow."  In  1797,  shortly  after  coming  to  Edinburgh, 
he  wrote:  "Horace  is  my  favorite  lyrist,  ancient  or  modern."  After 
the  great  success  of  his  poem,  he  was  dubbed  there,  "the  Erasmus 
Darwin  of  Edinburgh." 

"The  Pleasures  of  Hope"  is  not  exactly  like  what  Pope  did  write, 
but  is  very  much  like  what  we  might  have  expected  from  him  had 
he  lived  in  1799.  The  metrical  effect  resembles  closely  that  of 
"Eloisa  to  Abelard,"  which— as  we  are  too  apt  to  forget— is  as  truly 
Pope  as  "The  Dunciad."  The  chief  difference  in  subject-matter  is 
Campbell's  wealth  of  allusion  to  past  events  and  distant  regions, 
which  is  so  great  that  an  annotated  edition  of  his  poem  would  make 
an  excellent  primer  in  history  and  geography.  This,  however,  repre- 
sents a  change  in  mental  resources  rather  than  in  mental  attitude. 
In  Queen  Anne's  reign  Clive's  victory  at  Plassey  and  Washington's 
at  Yorktown  had  not  filled  English  minds  with  pictures  of  Hindu 
luxury  and  forest  ambush;  nor  had  historic  and  philological  research 
unrolled  before  them,  as  in  Campbell's  day 

her  ample  page 
Rich  with  the  spoils  of  time. 

Campbell's  contemporaries  believed  his  "Pleasures  of  Hope"  clearly 
in  the  Pope  tradition;  it  was  in  the  strength  of  that  faith  that  they 
gave  it  welcome;  and  we  see  no  reason  for  quarreling  with  their 
verdict.  Pope's 


I 


Lo  the  poor  Indian,  whose  untutored  mind 
Sees  God  in  clouds  and  hears  him  in  the  wind 


IS  not  very  different  from  Campbell's  lines: 

Come,  bright  Improvement!  on  the  car  of  Time, 
And  rule  the  spacious  world  from  clime  to  clime; 
Thy  handmaid  arts  shall  every  wild  explore. 
Trace  every  wave,  and  culture  every  shore. 

[  31  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

On  Erie's  banks,  where  tigers  steal  along, 
And  the  dread  Indian  chants  a  dismal  song. 
Where  human  fiends  on  midnight  errands  walk, 
And  bathe  in  brains  the  murderous  tomahawk — 
There  shall  the  flocks  on  thymy  pasture  stray. 
And  Shepherds  dance  at  Summer's  opening  day. 

Considering  that  Campbell  wrote  after  the  French  Revolution,  his 
sympathy  with  liberty  and  Poland  is  not  so  much  more  striking  than 
Pope's  lines  in  'The  Essay  on  Man": 

Who  first  taught  souls  enslaved,  and  realms  undone, 
The  enormous  faith  of  many  made  for  one? 

The  great  vogue  of  modified  Pope  imitations  at  the  end  of  the 
eighteenth  century  represented  the  force  of  a  long  tradition,  not  an 
organized  movement,  or  even  an  instinctive  sympathy,  among  the 
poets  concerned.  Rogers  liked  some  of  Campbell's  poems  but  was 
no  great  admirer  of  "The  Pleasures  of  Hope."  Apparently  also  he 
disapproved  of  Crabbe.  The  beginning  of  "The  Pleasures  of  Hope" 
condemns  as  unsatisfactory  "Nature  pictured  too  severely  true," 
which  would  hardly  argue  enthusiasm  for  "The  Village."  It  is  a 
question  whether  the  avidity  of  the  public  was  quite  as  great  as  the 
sales  would  indicate,  for  when  a  book  is  fashionable  the  number  of 
purchasers  may  exceed  the  number  of  readers.  Neither  were  the 
authors  involved  necessarily  anti-romantic.  The  journals  of  Rogers 
during  the  period  show  a  mild  love  of  Gothic  architecture;  he  ad- 
mired Beattie's  "Minstrel";  and  Anna  Seward  was  a  most  enthu- 
siastic devotee  of  "Ossian."  But  certainly  literary  England  at  the 
turn  of  the  century  was  in  no  mood  to  welcome  poetry  which  out- 
spokenly decried  Pope  and  which  was  aggressively  unlike  him  in 
thought  and  style. 

Ill 

In  the  field  of  creative  poetry  innovation  had  to  encounter  a 
hidebound  traditional  prejudice.  In  the  field  of  prose  this  was  not  so. 
Prose  was  in  the  late  eighteenth  century  a  newcomer  in  the  field  of 
literature,  a  vulgar  upstart  with  no  great  traditions  to  maintain.  If 

[  32  ] 


I 


POPULAR  TASTE  AND  TENDENCIES 

its  works  fell  into  tj^es  and  schools,  their  differences  were  only 
vaguely  recognized ;  and  any  one  felt  free  to  read  a  prose  work  that 
appealed  to  him  without  incurring  the  charge  of  literary  heresy.  It 
is  a  question  if  the  popularity  of  Macpherson's  "Ossian"  was  not 
aided  by  the  fact  that,  being  in  rhythmic  prose,  it  shocked  no  metri- 
cal convention.  In  France  the  distinction  was  so  keenly  felt  that 
romantic  prose  by  Rousseau,  St.  Pierre,  and  Chateaubriand  was 
widely  read  for  nearly  a  lifetime  before  markedly  romantic  poetry 
ventured  to  appear  at  all.  It  was  probably  in  part  due  to  this  preju- 
dice that  during  the  last  decade  of  the  eighteenth  century  the  Gothic 
and  medieval  romance  attained  an  astounding  popularity,  while  the 
medieval  poems  of  Tom  Warton  and  Chatterton  and  the  old  Norse 
or  Welsh  translations  of  Gray  were  but  little  read. 

Another  and  stronger  reason  for  the  vogue  of  the  Gothic  novel 
was  the  general  melodramatic  taste  of  the  generation.  This  called 
into  existence  shortly  before  the  turn  of  the  century  a  flood  of  cheap 
melodramatic  translations  and  adaptations  from  the  German,  which 
had  little  enough  of  enduring  value,  but  which  served  as  a  gauge  of 
the  public's  attitude  and  in  various  ways  influenced  later  literature. 
The  German  melodrama  and  Gothic  romance  were  closely  related. 
Mrs.  Radcliffe  and  M.  G.  Lewis,  the  two  chief  exponents  of  the  latter 
type,  travelled  in  Germany  before  producing  some  of  their  best- 
known  work,  and  appealed  to  the  same  love  of  sentiment,  excite- 
ment, and  sham  medievalism  as  their  Teutonic  contemporaries.  The 
vogue  of  the  two  literary  types  was  exactly  synchronous,  save  for 
the  fact  that  the  demand  for  Mrs.  Radcliffe's  novels  did  not  die  out 
so  abruptly. 

From  1762  to  1790  there  was  a  thin  but  unbroken  line  of  succes- 
sion in  novels  medieval  in  date  and  more  or  less  unearthly  in  atmos- 
phere. They  dealt  with  underground  passages,  haunted  chambers, 
lost  heirs,  knights  who  acted,  not  as  history  indicates,  but  as  young 
ladies  believed  that  they  should;  and  all  the  other  appurtenances  of 

The  life  that  never  was  on  sea  or  land. 

Some  of  these  had  been  popular,  others  not.  Between  1789  and  1797, 
Mrs.  Ann  Radcliffe  published  a  series  of  romances  which  had  a 

[  33  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

transitory  but  brilliant  popular  success,  a  sale  so  good  that  she  re- 
ceived £800  for  the  last  one,  an  exceedingly  high  price  in  that  day. 
Her  "Mysteries  of  Udolpho,"  as  an  old  lady  told  Thackeray,  was 
"one  of  the  most  famous  romances  that  ever  was  published  in  this 
country."  To  say  nothing  of  her  gushing  female  admirers,  she  was 
probably  read  by  every  one  of  the  future  great  writers  of  the  roman- 
tic generation.  Tom  Moore  had  perused  her  as  early  as  1796.  Her 
influence  appears  repeatedly  in  Scott's  writings,  and  in  Byron's 
"Manfred"  and  "Lara."  Shelley  as  a  boy  devoured  her  pages. 
Keats  alludes  to  her,  though  without  enthusiasm.  When  her 
"Udolpho"  appeared,  the  aged  and  scholarly  Joseph  War  ton  sat  up 
most  of  the  night  to  finish  it.  Byron  bracketed  her  with  Otway, 
Schiller,  and  Shakespeare  among  those  who  had  hallowed  Venice 
for  readers;  and  "Barry  Cornwall"  with  Le  Sage,  Fielding,  Rich- 
ardson, and  Sterne  among  those  who  "forced  me  to  travel  onwards  to 
the  Intellectual  Mountains."  "The  mighty  magician"  of  "Udolpho," 
Mathias  called  her;  and  Leigh  Hunt  as  a  child  ate  his  cake  "wiping 
away  the  crumbs  as  they  fell  upon  our  ^Mysteries  of  Udolpho.' " 
Now  her  works  are  like  one  of  Ossian's  ruins,  where  the  wind  sighs 
and  the  thistle  grows,  but  no  reader's  foot  intrudes. 

Elaborate  analyses  of  her  various  novels  can  be  found  elsewhere. 
Coleridge,  "on  reading  a  romance  in  Mrs.  Radcliffe's  style,"  amused 
himself  "with  making  out  a  scheme  which  was  to  serve  for  all 
romances  a  priori,  only  varying  the  proportions.  A  baron,  or  bar- 
oness, ignorant  of  their  birth  and  in  some  dependent  situation;  a 
castle,  on  a  rock;  a  sepulchre,  at  some  distance  from  the  rock; 
deserted  rooms;  underground  passages;  pictures;  a  ghost,  so  be- 
lieved; or  a  written  record,  blood  in  it;  a  wonderful  cut-throat,  etc." 
Her  general  atmosphere  has  been  half  humorously  summed  up  by 
Leigh  Hunt  in  two  lines: 

Radcliffe,  fear-charmed,  ever  breathlessly  creeping 
Through  castles  and  corridors,  frightful  to  sleep  in. 

Posterity,  indifferent  to  her  ghostly  thrills,  merely  asks  what  ele- 
ments in  her  work  roused  such  contemporary  enthusiasm.  These  do 
not  include  her  skillfully  conducted  plots,  which,  but  for  offsetting 

[  34  ] 


POPULAR  TASTE  AND  TENDENCIES 

weaknesses,  would  give  permanent,  not  temporary,  popularity.  What 
the  late  eighteenth  century  welcomed  in  her  and  the  mature  nine- 
teenth rejected,  appear  to  have  been  chiefly  her  subterranean  Gothic 
machinery  and  her  half  Ossianic,  half  Richardsonian  sentimentality. 
Two  passages  from  "The  Italian"  will  illustrate  these  traits.  The 
first  describes  Ellena  Rosalba's  attempted  escape  from  the  convent 
where  she  is  imprisoned;  the  second,  her  preparations  for  her  mar- 
riage, which  was  broken  off  a  moment  later,  somewhat  like  that  of 
Jane  Eyre. 

"The  friar  departed,  and  the  nun,  still  silent,  conducted  her 
through  many  solitary  passages,  where  not  even  a  distant  foot-fall 
echoed,  and  whose  walls  were  roughly  painted  with  subjects  indica- 
tory of  the  severe  superstitions  of  the  place,  tending  to  inspire 
melancholy  awe.  Ellena's  hope  of  pity  vanished  as  her  eyes  glanced 
over  these  symbols  of  the  disposition  of  the  inhabitants,  and  on  the 
countenance  of  the  nun  characterized  by  a  gloomy  malignity,  which 
seemed  ready  to  inflict  upon  others  some  portion  of  the  unhappiness 
she  herself  suffered.  As  she  glided  forward  with  soundless  step,  her 
white  drapery,  floating  along  these  solemn  avenues,  and  her  hollow 
features  touched  with  the  mingled  light  and  shadow  which  the  partial 
rays  of  a  taper  she  held  occasioned,  she  seemed  like  a  spectre  newly 
risen  from  tie  grave,  rather  than  a  living  being." 

"It  was  a  gloomy  evening,  and  the  lake,  which  broke  in  dark 
waves  upon  the  shore,  mingled  its  hollow  sounds  with  those  of  the 
wind,  that  bowed  the  lofty  pines,  and  swept  in  gusts  among  the 
rocks.  ...  As  they  approached  the  chapel,  Ellena  fixed  her  eyes 
on  the  mournful  C3^resses  which  waved  over  it,  and  sighed.  ^Those,' 
she  said,  ^are  funereal  mementoes — not  such  as  should  grace  the 
altar  of  marriage!  Vivaldi,  I  could  be  superstitious. — Think  you 
not  they  are  portentous  of  future  misfortune?  But  forgive  me;  my 
spirits  are  weak.'  .  .  .  Thus  they  entered  the  chapel.  Silence,  and 
a  kind  of  gloomy  sepulchral  light,  prevailed  within." 

In  1795,  between  Mrs.  Radcliffe's  "Udolpho"  and  her  "Italian," 
a  new  dish  was  served  up  for  readers  in  "The  Monk"  by  M.  G. 
Lewis,  "a  little  round,  fat,  oily  man  of" — twenty,  who  had  that 

[  35  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

comfortable  joy  in  a  good  ghost  story  which  goes  with  an  utter 
absence  of  the  higher  imagination.  He  was  induced  to  finish  this 
work,  which  he  had  temporarily  laid  aside,  by  reading  "The  Mys- 
teries of  Udolpho,"  he  tells  us,  "which  is,  in  my  opinion,  one  of  the 
most  interesting  books  that  has  ever  been  published."  Mrs.  Rad- 
cliffe  reciprocated  by  drawing  a  large  amount  of  inspiration  from 
his  "Monk"  for  "The  Italian."  In  both  we  have  priestly  intrigue, 
dark  conclaves  of  the  Inquisition,  young  ladies  spirited  away  to 
gloomy  convents  and  badly  treated,  people  who  escape  from  these 
convents  by  underground  passages  past  a  cell  where  some  former 
monk  or  nun  had  died  imprisoned,  etc.  The  location  of  "The  Monk" 
is  mainly  in  Spain,  but  shifts  to  Germany  long  enough  to  introduce 
the  ghost  of  a  bleeding  nun  and  the  charitable  conduct  of  The 
Wandering  Jew.  The  devil  is  a  leading  character,  and  the  only  one 
"in  at  the  death"  of  the  unfortunate  brother  Ambrosio.  Of  Mrs. 
Radcliffe's  sentimental  appeal  "The  Monk"  has  little  but  replaces 
this  by  an  equally  ever  salable  ingredient,  to  wit,  immorality. 
Inasmuch,  however,  as  the  popularity  of  the  book  is  long  dead  and 
the  demand  for  the  risque  yet  lives,  it  is  only  fair  to  believe  that 
Lewis's  thousands  of  readers  were  attracted  by  his  devils,  cata- 
combs, and  haunted  castles  as  much  as  by  his  indecency. 

The  works  of  both  these  authors,  though  obviously  the  progeny 
of  Walpole's  "Otranto,"  turn  our  thoughts  to  Germany.  Lewis  had 
been  in  that  country  in  1792,  and  wrote  a  large  part  of  his  novel  at 
The  Hague.  He  tells  us  in  his  Advertisement  that  "the  bleeding  nun 
is  a  tradition  still  credited  in  many  parts  of  Germany;  and  I  have 
been  told,  that  the  ruins  of  the  castle  of  Lauerstein,  which  she  is 
supposed  to  haunt,  may  yet  be  seen  upon  the  borders  of  Thuringia." 
Mrs.  Radcliffe  also  voyaged  on  the  Rhine  the  year  in  which  her 
"Mysteries  of  Udolpho"  was  published.  Here,  as  her  Journal  tells  us, 
she  watched  "fortresses  or  towns,  many  of  them  placed  in  the  most 
wild  and  tremendous  situations;  their  ancient  and  gloomy  structures 
giving  ideas  of  the  sullen  tyranny  of  former  times,"  or  remembered 
that  "there  is  a  story  faintly  recorded  concerning  them,"  one  of  these 
being  "the  story,  on  which  the  wild  and  vivid  imagination  of  Ariosto 
is  said  to  have  founded  his  Orlando."  Consequently  it  was  not  chance 

[  36  ] 


POPULAR  TASTE  AND  TENDENCIES 

but  a  common  impulse  which  made  "The  Monk"  and  "The  Italian" 
coincide  in  date  with  a  flood  of  German  importations. 
—  Before  1790  English  literature  had  been  astonishingly  insulated 
from  German.  One  reason  for  this  had  been  the  barrenness  of  the 
latter  for  centuries  before  the  death  of  Pope,  its  great  men  being 
either  medieval  or  eighteenth-century  with  a  vast  desert  between. 
Another  reason  was  the  general  ignorance,  even  among  scholars,  of 
the  German  language,  an  amusing  proof  of  which  is  found  in  the 
extreme  badness  of  the  English  translations  up  to  the  beginning  of 
the  nineteenth  century.  Economic  and  political  conditions  also  must 
have  drawn  English  interests  toward  centralized  and  cosmopolitan 
France  rather  than  toward  provincial  and  disorganized  Germany. 
As  a  result,  when  England  in  the  last  decade  before  1800  turned  to 
German  writers,  she  imported  with  more  enthusiasm  than  discern- 
ment; and  A.  W.  Schlegel  justly  complained  that  the  literature  of 
his  country  was  represented  west  of  the  North  Sea  mainly  by  its 
trash. 

What  was  lacking  in  quality,  however,  was  made  up  in  quantity. 
At  least  eleven  tales  or  novels  were  rendered  from  the  German 
between  1790  and  1796,  several  of  them  medieval  or  supernatural 
in  character.  These  included  "The  Sorcerer"  and  "The  Black 
Valley"  from  Veit  Weber's  "Sagen  der  Vorzeit,"  Schiller's  "Ghost- 
seer"  and  Friederich  Kalert's  "Geisterbanner"  translated  as:  "The 
Necromancer:  or  The  Tale  of  the  Black  Forest."  Burger's  unearthly 
ballad  of  "Lenore"  appeared  in  six  translations  within  a  year.  Much 
more  than  this  was  done  in  the  dramatic  field.  Goethe's  "Stella" 
was  Englished  in  1798  and  his  "Goetz  von  Berlichingen"  by  Walter 
Scott  in  1799.  Schiller's  "Robbers,"  a  wild,  melodramatic  play 
glorifying  the  romantic  robber,  was  translated  by  Lord  Wood- 
houselee  in  1795,  and  had  a  second  edition  the  same  year.  Other 
translations  of  it  were  made  by  the  Rev.  William  Render  in  1799, 
and  by  a  Mr.  Thompson  in  1804.  Schiller's  "Kabale  und  Liebe"  was 
turned  into  English  by  a  Mr.  Peter  Colombine  in  1795  and  by  M.  G. 
Lewis  as  "The  Minister"  in  1797;  his  "Fiesco,"  in  a  good  transla- 
tion, came  out  in  1796.  The  dominant  notes  in  these  plays  were 
excess  of  passion,  romantic  love  of  personal  liberty,  and  wild,  often 

[37  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

improbable,  tragedy.  "The  Robbers"  had  already  created  a  juror  in 
Germany  and  now  produced  one  in  England.  Coleridge  wrote  to 
Southey  in  1794:  "  ^Tis  past  one  o'clock  in  the  morning.  I  sat  down 
at  twelve  o'clock  to  read  The  Robbers  of  Schiller.  I  had  read,  chill 
and  trembling,  when  I  came  to  the  part  where  the  Moor  fixes  a 
pistol  over  the  robbers  who  are  asleep.  I  could  read  no  more.  My 
God,  Southey,  who  is  this  Schiller,  this  convulser  of  the  heart?" 
Two  years  later  Southey  in  turn  wrote  to  a  friend  regarding  "Kabale 
und  Liebe":  ''Have  you  read  Cabal  and  Love?  In  spite  of  a  trans- 
lation for  which  the  translator  deserves  hanging,  the  fifth  act  is 
dreadfully  affecting.  I  want  to  write  my  tragedies  of  the  Banditti." 
William  Hazlitt,  in  the  prime  of  his  critical  powers,  could  say: 
"Five-and-twenty  years  have  elapsed  since  I  first  read  the  trans- 
lation of  'The  Robbers,'  but  they  have  not  blotted  the  impression 
from  my  mind;  it  is  here  still,  an  old  dweller  in  the  chambers  of  the 
brain.  ...  I  do  not  like  Schiller's  later  style  so  well."  Goethe's 
"Goetz,"  which  influenced  German  literature  even  more  than  "The 
Robbers,"  entered  the  English  arena  too  late;  but  its  German  imita- 
tions had  been  translated  before  it  and  had  done  their  work.  For 
instance,  James  Boaden's  "Secret  Tribunal"  was  acted  at  the 
Theater-Royal,  Covent  Garden,  and  printed  1795.  The  material 
for  the  play  was  taken  directly  from  a  German  novel,  "Hermann  von 
Unna"  (which  had  already  been  translated  in  1794),  but,  whatever 
its  father,  its  grandfather  was  "Goetz."  Like  Goethe's  play  it  is 
located  in  late  medieval  Germany,  and  draws  from  "Goetz"  the 
scene  in  Act  V  before  the  dread  Secret  Tribunal  (Die  Heilige 
Vehme). 

The  German  invader  triimiphed  not  only  on  the  bookseller's 
counter,  but  also  on  the  boards  of  the  theater.  The  chief  writer 
introduced  here  was  Kotzebue,  a  dramatist  who,  like  Scribe  and 
Clyde  Fitch,  seemed  bent  on  proving  that  theatrical  success  can  be 
independent  of  literary  merit.  His  ephemeral  success  reached  all 
over  western  Europe,  and  was  by  no  means  peculiar  to  England; 
but  the  striking  phenomenon  there  is  at  once  the  extent  and  the 
brevity  of  his  vogue.  At  least  ten  of  his  plays  were  translated  in  the 
three  years  from  1798  to  1800,  one  in  1801,  and  no  more,  that  we 

[  38  ] 


POPULAR  TASTE  AND  TENDENCIES 

have  discovered,  until  1808,  after  which  a  few  straggling  versions 
appeared. 

The  most  famous  of  these  dramas  was  "Menschenhass  und  Reue," 
freely  rendered  under  the  title,  "The  Stranger,"  which  had  presenta- 
tions and  editions  galore.  It  is  a  painfully  sentimental  play,  in  which 
an  erring  wife  by  long  continued  repentance  wins  back  her  husband 
and  cures  him  of  the  misanthropy  due  to  her  sin.  Another,  "Adelaide 
of  Wulfingen,"  belongs  to  the  German  medieval  current  deriving 
from  "Goetz."  Sir  Hugo  of  Wulfingen,  absent  twenty-three  years  on 
a  crusade  in  the  Holy  Land,  returns  disguised  as  a  pilgrim,  and  finds 
his  son  Theobald  living  happily  with  a  wife  named  Adelaide.  Then 
it  is  discovered  that  Adelaide  is  Hugo's  natural  daughter,  and  her 
husband's  half-sister.  Hugo  takes  the  matter  very  philosophically, 
and  his  long  arguments  excusing  incest  are  apparently  approved  by 
the  author;  but  Adelaide  goes  insane  with  horror  and  kills  both  her 
little  children.  Almost  as  melodramatic  but  pleasanter  in  tone  is  the 
Peruvian  play  which  Sheridan  adapted  as  "Pizarro."  One  cannot 
help  smiling  to  see  the  author  of  "The  Critic"  responsible  for  a  book 
that  lies  open  to  all  his  most  pointed  attacks;  but  the  popular  suc- 
cess of  the  work  amply  justified  his  theatrical  judgment.  Crabb 
Robinson  called  it  "the  most  excellent  play  I  ever  saw  for  variety 
of  attractions";  and  Tom  Moore  wrote  to  his  mother  in  1799:  "I 
have  not  yet  been  to  this  wonderful  Tizarro'  of  Sheridan's,  which  is 
putting  all  London  into  fevers." 

This  wave  of  melodrama  was  at  its  height  during  the  years  when 
the  "Lyrical  Ballads"  were  being  written  and  forced  on  an  indif- 
ferent public.  Its  abrupt  collapse  was  partly  due  to  its  own  excesses, 
partly  to  the  combined  wit  and  justice  of  the  satirical  attacks  made 
on  it.  Of  these  there  were  several,  for  the  literary  disease  was  patent 
to  everybody.  W.  R.  Spencer's  play  "Urania"  (1802)  is  an  obvious 
burlesque.  Manfred,  the  hero,  who  "would  give  more  for  an  old, 
worm-eaten  room  full  of  ghosts,  than  for  a  new  marble  villa  full  of 
statues,"  is  bent  on  marrying  a  spirit,  and  the  Princess  of  Tarentum 
wins  him  for  a  husband  by  playing  the  part  of  one.  The  Prologue, 
by  Lord  Townshend,  alludes  to  "fastidious"  people  who  lament  that 

[39  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

Day  after  day  our  spectre  drama's  crammed 
With  heavenly  spirits  or  with  goblins  damned. 

One  of  the  popular  Pope  imitators  in  1798  had  made  a  similar 
attack: 

Mark  next,  how  fable,  language,  fancy  flies 
To  Ghosts,  and  Beards,  and  HoppergoUop  cries: 
Lo,  from  the  abyss,  unmeaning  spectres  drawn. 
The  Gothic  glass,  blue  flame,  and  flick'ring  lawn! 
Choked  with  vile  weeds,  our  once  proud  Avon  strays; 
When  Novels  die,  and  rise  again  in  plays: 
No  Congress  props  our  Drama's  falling  state, 
The  modem  ultimatum  is  "Translate." 
Thence  sprout  the  morals  of  the  German  school. 

In  the  same  year  Fawcett,  a  friend  of  Wordsworth,  wrote  in  similar 
vein  and  metre: 

E'en  listless  fair  ones  shall  from  languor  wake, 
And  o'er  the  lines  with  pleasing  terror  shake. 
If  there  the  lovely  tremblers  may  peruse 
The  harsh,  coarse  horror  of  a  German  muse. 
Let  hideous  Superstition  form  the  base 
On  which  the  wildly  dismal  tale  you  raise: 
Let  ghastliest  forms,  pale  ghosts,  and  goblins  grim 
Form  of  your  verse  the  terrible  sublime. 

The  fiercest  and  most  famous  parody,  however,  was  "The 
Rovers,"  published  in  The  Anti-Jacobin  (1797-98).  The  Dramatis 
Personae  include: 

"Prior  of  the  Abbey  of  Quedlinburgh,  very  corpulent  and  cruel. 

Rogero,  a  Prisoner  in  the  Abbey,  in  love  with  Matilda  Pottin- 
gen.  .  .  . 

Roderic,  Count  of  Saxe  Weimar,  a  bloody  tyrant,  with  red  hair 
and  an  amorous  complexion." 

The  Prologue  tells  us: 

Too  long  have  Rome  and  Athens  been  the  rage; 
And  classic  buskins  soiled  a  British  stage. 
To-night  our  bard,  who  scorns  pedantic  rules, 

[40] 


POPULAR  TASTE  AND  TENDENCIES 

His  plot  has  borrowed  from  the  German  schools; 

— ^The  German  schools — where  no  dull  maxims  bind 

The  bold  expansion  of  the  electric  mind. 

Fixed  to  no  period,  circled  by  no  space, 

He  leaps  the  flaming  bounds  of  time  and  place: 

Round  the  dark  confines  of  the  forest  raves, 

With  gentle  robbers  stocks  his  gloomy  caves. 

The  first  scene  is  an  inn  at  Weimar.  Then — 

Scene  changes  to  a  subterranean  vault  in  the  abbey  of  Quedlinburgh; 
with  coffins,  'scutcheons,  death's-heads  and  cross-bones.  Toads  and  other 
loathsome  reptiles  are  seen  traversing  the  obscurer  parts  of  the  stage. 
Rogero  appears  in  chains,  in  a  suit  of  rusty  armour,  with  his  beard  grown, 
and  a  cap  of  grotesque  form  upon  his  head.  .  .  . 

Rogero.  Eleven  years!  it  is  now  eleven  years  since  I  was  first  immured 
in  this  living  sepulchre.  .  .  .  Yes,  here  in  the  depths  of  an  eternal 
Dungeon — in  the  Nursing  Cradle  of  Hell — the  Suburbs  of  Perdition — ^in 
a  nest  of  Demons,  where  Despair,  in  vain,  sits  brooding  over  the  putrid 
eggs  of  Hope;  where  Agony  woos  the  embrace  of  Death. 

This  is  a  pointed  attack,  not  only  on  German  adaptations,  but  also 
on  M.  G.  Lewis's  "Castle  Spectre,"  an  original  play  but  modeled  on 
the  foreign  type,  which  represents  Earl  Reginald  as  confined  in  a 
vault  under  Conway  Castle  for  sixteen  years,  "emaciated,  in  coarse 
garments,  his  hair  hanging  wildly  about  his  face,  and  a  chain  bound 
round  his  body."  The  "Castle  Spectre,"  first  acted  1797,  ran  sixty 
nights,  continued  popular  for  years,  and  in  print  reached  an  eleventh 
edition  in  1803. 

-The  effect  of  "The  Rovers,"  according  to  Walter  Scott,  was  "that 
the  German  school,  with  its  beauties  and  its  defects,  passed  com- 
pletely out  of  fashion."  We  have  already  noticed  the  abrupt  cessation 
of  Kotzebue's  plays  after  1800.  Scott's  version  of  "Goetz"  in  1799 
received  only  a  lukewarm  welcome.  Coleridge's  noble  translation  of 
Schiller's  "Wallenstein"  in  1801  fell  so  flat  that  Longman  was  said  to 
have  lost  £250  by  it.  In  the  same  year  "Monk"  Lewis's  "Tales  of 
Wonder,"  a  collection  of  medieval  and  supernatural  verse  narratives 
by  himself,  Scott,  and  others,  had  a  very  indifferent  success.  Both 
Germanic  influences  and  melodrama  revived  to  some  extent  later; 

[41  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

but  for  the  time  being  there  was  a  marked  reaction  against  them; 
and,  as  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge  gave  their  audience  the  impres- 
sion of  being  "very  German,"  this  reaction  could  hardly  have 
lessened  their  difficulties  in  winning  recognition. 

Whether  the  sales  of  existing  Gothic  romances  fell  off  as  fast  or 
not,  there  was  a  marked  chill  also  in  the  public  attitude  toward  any 
more  of  that  type.  Maturings  "Montorio"  in  1804, — a  novel  of  the 
Radcliffe  brand  and  about  equal  in  merit,  although,  it  is  true,  less 
calculated  to  win  many  readers, — met  with  such  indifference  that 
the  author  modified  his  type  of  novel.  Mrs.  Radcliffe  in  1802  began 
a  sixth  romance,  "Gaston  de  Blondeville,"  but  left  it  in  manuscript 
for  years.  Perhaps  she  recognized  its  inferiority,  perhaps  she 
dropped  writing  because  her  financial  condition  was  improved,  but 
also  the  change  in  public  taste  had  become  too  obvious.  She  lived 
until  1823,  but  published  nothing  after  "The  Italian."  Meanwhile 
beyond  the  "fitful  fever"  of  melodrama  and  the  senile  decay  of  neo- 
classicism  new  and  nobler  authors  began  to  loom  dimly  in  the 
public  eye. 


[42  ] 


CHAPTER  II 

The  Eddy  Around  Bristol;  Rousseau  and  the  French 
Revolution  in  Poetry^  1794- 1799 

Bristol  in  1794,  though  the  second  largest  city  in  Great  Britain, 
had  a  woefully  small  part  to  show  in  the  history  of  the  nation's 
literature.  Yet  during  tiie  closing  years  of  the  eighteenth  century  it 
became  the  center  of  a  literary  vortex  which  rejuvenated  English 
poetry  and  made  that  erstwhile  Philistine  region  the  Mecca  of  many 
a  literary  pilgrim.  "Ten  years  ago/'  wrote  Southey  in  1800,  "Bristol 
man  was  synonymous  with  Boeotian  in  Greece,  and  now  we  are 
before  any  of  the  provincial  towns."  The  poets  who  made  the  dis- 
trict famous  were  for  the  most  part  not  natives  but  pilgrims  from 
a  distance,  whom  chance  and  friends  had  drawn  there;  yet  the 
location  was  in  many  ways  favorable  for  the  development  of  a  new 
poetic  school.  The  meagerness  of  local  poetic  history  meant  an 
absence  of  traditional  tyranny  in  literature,  and  a  freer  hand  for  the 
innovator  than  he  would  have  found  in  London  or  even  in  Edin- 
burgh. Neighboring  landscapes,  with  their  beautiful  alternation  of 
curving  bay  and  suggestively  rolling  hill,  are  in  marked  contrast 
to  that  harsh  and  gloomy  environment  which  colored  the  poetry  of 
Crabbe.  The  district  lies  on  the  border-line  between  Anglo-Saxon 
middle  England  and  the  largely  Celtic  inhabitants  of  Wales  and 
Cornwall.  The  chief  figure  in  its  literature  was  the  boy  Chatterton, 
whose  corpse  had  been  brought  back  to  its  birthplace  there  a  quarter 
of  a  century  before,  and  the  shadow  of  whose  dead  hand  reaches 
farther  than  one  realizes  across  the  poems  of  the  Bristol  Eddy. 

In  June,  1794,  a  Cambridge  undergraduate,  named  Samuel  Taylor 
Coleridge,  visiting  Oxford  to  see  an  old  school-fellow,  accidentally 
met  there  a  young  Oxonian,  Robert  Southey,  between  whom  and 

[43  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

himself  there  immediately  sprang  up  a  warm  friendship.  Together 
they  formed  the  romantic  scheme  known  as  "Pantisocracy,"  by 
which  the  members,  having  supplied  themselves  with  money,  tools, 
wives,  and  other  necessary  impedimenta^  were  to  emigrate  to 
America,  found  a  colony  on  the  banks  of  the  Susquehanna,  own 
property  in  common,  and  realize  the  golden  dreams  of  Rousseau.  In 
a  few  months  they  had  enlisted  for  this  wild  scheme  several  of  their 
college  friends.  The  movement  was  essentially  one  of  romantic 
young  poets,  for,  although  only  two  became  ultimately  famous,  all 
at  that  time  were  poets — or  thought  they  were. 

O'er  the  ocean  swell, 
Sublime  of  Hope,  I  seek  the  cottaged  dell 
Where  Virtue  calm  with  careless  step  may  stray, 

wrote  one  of  them  of  the  American  voyage.  The  enterprise  was  also 
an  outburst  of  that  impractical  enthusiasm  characteristic  of  youth 
fresh  from  college,  an  enthusiasm  generated  by  four  years  of  a 
university  furnishing  ideals  and  four  years  of  a  father  supplying 
all  needed  cash.  It  was  above  all  an  offshoot  of  the  teachings  of 
Rousseau,  with  which  the  heads  of  its  members  were  seething. 

In  August  of  that  year  Coleridge  came  to  Bristol,  and  was  intro- 
duced by  Southey  to  Robert  Lovell,  the  son  of  a  wealthy  Quaker; 
then,  or  soon  after,  all  three  became  acquainted  with  Joseph  Cottle, 
a  bookseller  and  minor  poet,  who,  like  Southey,  was  a  Bristol  man. 
The  scheme  of  Pantisocracy  gradually  evaporated,  but  left  behind 
a  residuum  of  closely  affiliated  young  poets,  a  group  whose  center 
of  gravity,  though  not  their  fixed  residence,  was  the  great  town  by 
the  Severn. 

Their  personal  relations,  for  a  time  at  least,  were  very  close, 
Lovell,  Southey,  and  Coleridge  rooming  together  for  some  months. 
In  1794  the  three  men  conjointly  dashed  off  their  worthless  drama, 
"The  Fall  of  Robespierre,"  the  revolutionary  effervescence  of  an 
hour,  later  revised  by  Coleridge  and  published  by  him  at  Cambridge. 
In  1795  "Poems  by  Robert  Lovell  and  Robert  Southey,  of  Balliol 
College,  Oxford,"  were  printed  at  Bath,  Coleridge's  first  book  of 
verse  following  in  the  succeeding  April.  Lovell  had  already  married 

[  44  ] 


THE  EDDY  AROUND  BRISTOL 

one  of  the  Misses  Flicker,  of  Westbury,  a  pleasant  village  two  miles 
from  Bristol,  and  Southey  was  engaged  to  another.  Coleridge  now 
made  love  to  a  third,  and  he  and  Southey  were  married  in  Chatter- 
ton's  time-hallowed  church  of  St.  Mary  Redcliffe.  While  Southey  in 
1796  was  gone  to  Spain,  his  bride  boarded  with  the  Cottle 
sisters,  two  women,  wrote  the  bridegroom,  who  "make  even  bigotry 
amiable." 

Lovell  died  in  1796,  but  his  place  was  soon  more  than  filled.  In 
that  same  year  Coleridge,  touring  the  country  for  subscribers  to 
his  new  periodical.  The  Watchman,  became  acquainted  with  Charles 
Lloyd  at  Birmingham,  and  drew  the  latter  in  his  wake  back  to  the 
Bristol  region.  Lloyd  was  an  ill-balanced  man  of  twenty-one  years 
and  considerable  ability,  whose  virtues  and  literary  gifts  alike  were 
perverted  by  lifelong  melancholia.  He  had  already  written  several 
poems,  and  soon  added  others,  which  were  published  conjointly  with 
the  work  of  his  new  companions.  In  January,  1797,  Lloyd,  while 
in  London,  first  met  that  old  school-fellow  and  friend  of  Coleridge, 
Charles  Lamb,  who  about  this  time  became  one  of  their  new  band 
of  apostles.  Lamb's  relations  were  chiefly  by  letter,  for  poverty,  desk 
work,  and  family  troubles  held  him  in  London;  but  he  was  a  very 
genuine  part  of  the  circle,  corresponding  with  its  various  members, 
writing  poetry  with  them,  and  helping  to  mold  opinion.  That  summer 
he  spent  an  epoch-making  week  in  the  green  seclusion  of  Nether 
Stowey  with  Coleridge  and  Wordsworth,  and  two  months  later, 
with  Lloyd,  visited  Southey  at  Burton.  Afterwards  in  London  he 
had  many  a  pleasant  hour  with  Southey  while  the  latter  was  study- 
ing law  and  writing  "Madoc."  Poems  by  Lamb  and  Lloyd  found  a 
hospitable  nook  in  the  second  edition  of  Coleridge's  volume  in  1797; 
and  "Blank  Verse  by  Charles  Lloyd  and  Charles  Lamb"  appeared 
the  next  year.  Lloyd  dedicated  the  last-named  poems  to  Robert 
Southey,  whom  he  tells  that  "the  greater  part  of  them  were  written 
beneath  your  roof,  and  owe  their  existence  to  its  quiet  comforts." 
Through  Joseph  Cottle,  also,  the  group  became  acquainted  with  his 
elder  brother  Amos,  who,  like  himself,  wrote  poetry  not  wisely  but 
too  fluently.  Then  there  was  Thomas  Poole,  the  learned  and  high- 
minded  tanner  of  Nether  Stowey,  whose  good  sense  kept  him  from 

[45  ] 


\ 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

attempting  poetry  but  made  him  an  excellent  inspiration  to  poets. 
John  Thelwall,  also,  a  revolutionary  firebrand,  fleeing  from  govern- 
mental persecution,  had  settled  near  by  in  Wales,  and  both  by  letters 
and  visits  became  temporarily  a  part  of  the  group. 

The  chief  acquisition,  however,  was  Wordsworth.  Since  1795  he 
had  been  living  at  Racedown,  in  Dorsetshire,  about  fifty  miles  from 
Bristol  and  thirty  or  forty  from  Nether  Stowey,  his  house  there, 
incidentally,  belonging  to  a  Bristol  merchant,  whose  son  had  leased 
it  to  him.  Wordsworth  mentioned  Southey  early  in  1796,  and  appar- 
ently knew  of  Cottle  and  Coleridge  about  the  same  time.  In  1797 
he  came  to  live  near  Coleridge,  who  was  the  cohesive  magnet  tiiat 
drew  all  these  wandering  particles  together.  Passing  mention  may 
also  be  made  of  William  Hazlitt,  later  one  of  the  greatest  prose 
writers  of  his  age,  but  at  this  time  merely  a  callow  and  meditative 
youth.  Drawn  by  his  enthusiasm  for  Coleridge,  he  passed  three 
weeks  in  the  neighborhood  of  Nether  Stowey,  and  previously  had 
gone  to  the  beautiful  vale  of  Llangollen  "by  way  of  initiating  myself 
in  the  mysteries  of  natural  scenery." 

Though  gravitating  around  a  great  commercial  city,  this  move- 
ment was  essentially  a  rural  one.  A  considerable  amount  of  Southey's 
verse  was  written  in  the  suburb  of  Westbury,  some  of  Coleridge's 
in  rustic  retirement  at  Clevedon,  ten  miles  away,  where  he  rented 
a  cottage  for  a  short  time  with  his  bride;  and  the  best  poetry  of  all 
was  produced  around  the  little  village  of  Nether  Stowey,  over  thirty 
miles  to  the  southwest  of  Bristol,  where  the  Quantock  hills  look  out 
on  the  sea.  There  was  a  continual  coming  and  going  and  changing 
of  residence  among  the  writers  concerned,  which  made  Bristol  the 
center  of  the  intellectual  eddy  but  by  no  means  the  dominant  element 
in  the  atmosphere. 

Socially  Wordsworth  became  affiliated  with  Coleridge  alone 
rather  than  with  the  whole  group.  His  letters  to  the  Cottle  brothers, 
though  exceedingly  cordial,  are  few  and  short.  He  saw  little  of 
Lamb,  who  most  of  the  time  was  absent  in  London,  or  of  Southey 
and  Lloyd,  from  both  of  whom  Coleridge  was  drifting  away.  Words- 
worth's brother  Christopher  by  September,  1800,  was  engaged  to 
Lloyd's  sister;  and  Joseph  Cottle  tells  us  of  spending  a  very  pleasant 

[  46] 


THE  EDDY  AROUND  BRISTOL 

week  at  Alfoxden  with  Coleridge  and  Wordsworth,  in  return  for 
which  Wordsworth  and  Dorothy  stayed  a  week  with  him  after 
quitting  Alfoxden;  but  it  is  probable  that  Wordsworth  summed  up 
his  social  relations  to  the  Bristol  Parnassus  when  he  wrote  in  March, 
1798:  "We  have  no  particular  reason  to  be  attached  to  the  neighbor- 
hood of  Stowey,  but  the  society  of  Coleridge,  and  the  friendship 
of  Poole." 

Shortly  after  1798  the  group  disintegrated.  Southey  went  to  Spain, 
Coleridge  and  Wordsworth  to  Germany;  and  afterwards  all  three, 
as  well  as  Lloyd,  settled  in  the  Lake  region,  over  two  hundred  miles 
from  the  scene  of  their  early  enthusiasms.  Lovell  was  dead;  Poole 
remained  at  Stowey  and  the  Cottle  brothers  at  Bristol.  Thelwall 
drifted  elsewhere.  Lamb  corresponded  with  his  friends  as  cordially 
as  ever,  but  no  longer  wrote  poetry  with  them.  He  may  be  said  to 
have  ended  his  career  as  a  minor  poet  with  the  publication  and 
failure  of  "John  Woodvil"  in  1802 ;  after  that  he  turned  from  poetry 
to  scholarship,  and  eventually  from  scholarship  to  the  field  of  his 
final  triumph,  the  prose  essay. 

What  did  this  movement  represent?  Was  there  any  new  and 
dominant  note  in  teaching  or  literary  type  common  to  all  its  mem- 
bers? Did  such  almost  painfully  minor  figures  as  Cottle  and  Lovell 
really  influence  the  great  minds  of  Coleridge  and  Wordsworth  or 
the  slightly  inferior  but  none  the  less  commanding  intellects  of 
Southey  and  Lamb?  We  cannot  hope  to  give  a  final  answer  to  these 
questions;  nor,  could  Coleridge  or  Southey  be  called  from  the  grave, 
would  they  probably  be  able  to  give  it,  so  subtle  are  the  influences 
of  environment,  so  much  can  a  great  intellect  winnow  unconsciously 
from  the  inferior  minds  around  it.  We  do  know,  however,  that 
Southey  in  1806  mentioned  "three  men  now  all  in  their  graves,  [all 
Pantisocrats]  each  of  whom  produced  no  little  effect  upon  my  char- 
acter and  after  life, — Allen,  Lovell,  and  poor  Edmund  Seward, — 
whom  I  never  remember  without  the  deepest  love  and  veneration." 
In  August,  1797,  Lamb  wrote: 

I  thought  on  Lloyd; 
All  he  had  been  to  me. 

[  47  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

Criticism,  imaginative  suggestion,  and  the  formation  of  esthetic 
theory  are  not  by  any  means  the  only  aids  which  a  galaxy  of  minor 
writers  offer  to  their  more  gifted  comrades.  For  men  who  are 
young  sympathy  and  enthusiasm — even  if  only  temporary  and 
marred  by  personal  quarrels — counts  much;  for  men  who  are  poor 
financial  aid  is  not  to  be  ignored;  and  there  is  a  confidence  begotten 
from  the  consciousness  of  numbers  that  must  have  meant  a  great 
deal  to  the  gregarious  and  vacillating  mind  of  Coleridge.  All  his  best 
writing  was  kindled  in  his  mind  by  inspiring  companionship;  the 
moment  that  he  felt  himself  alone  in  the  world  he  became  dumb. 

Certain  facts  may  be  accepted  without  demur.  This  was  the  chief 
semi-organized  movement  in  poetry  of  the  new  generation.  Every 
one  of  the  genuine  poets  in  it  was  under  twenty-eight.  Here  was  no 
"tribe  of  Ben,"  no  "Dr.  Johnson  and  his  circle,"  no  ardent  young 
Paul  at  the  feet  of  a  hoary  Gamaliel ;  in  every  matter,  literary,  social, 
or  political,  there  was  a  general  feeling:  "Behold,  I  make  all  things 
new."  Young  Campbell  at  this  very  time  was  the  protegd  in  Edin- 
burgh of  the  elderly  Dr.  Anderson;  Scott  was  a  legal  officer  and 
upholder  of  the  good  old  order;  the  Bristol  group  had  broken  with 
the  past. 

Furthermore^  Coleridge,  Southey^  .and  .Wordsworth,  a&- well  as 
Amos  Cottle,  were  all  Oxford  or  Cambridge  men.  In  this  they 
differed  from  Burns,  Crabbe,  and  Rogers,  who  had  no  university 
career;  from  Cowper,  who  began  poetry  late  in  life  when  college 
,  influences  were  dead;  from  Scott  and  Campbell,  who  were  educated 
\  in  the  north;  and  from  Moore,  who  studied  in  Dublin.  They  were 
"Y'the  only  spokesmen  in  poetry  for  the  two  great  English  universities 
from  1790  to  1807.  Neither  they  nor  their  almcB  matres,  apparently, 
looked  upon  each  other  with  great  enthusiasm;  but  they  had  as 
college  men  a  certain  common  body  of  thought  and  feeling.  This 
may  partly  account  for  the  fact  that  much  of  their  earlier  and  poorer 
work  imitates  Gray,  the  scholar  poet  of  Cambridge,  Tom  Warton, 
the  scholar  poet  of  Oxford,  or  that  plaintive  disciple  of  the  Wartons, 
William  Bowles.  Amos  Cottle's  only  title  to  consideration  is  a  very 
mediocre  translation  of  Saemund's  "Edda,"  continuing  the  tradition 
of  Gray's  Norse  translations.  The  little  body  of  immature  verse 

[48] 


THE  EDDY  AROUND  BRISTOL 

bequeathed  us  by  Lovell  is  in  almost  slavish  imitation  of  Gray,  his 
^^Decayed  Farmhouse"  ending  with  an  epitaph  like  that  of  the 
"Elegy."  His  sonnets  are  equally  derivative  from  Bowles,  a  quota- 
tion from  whom  heads  the  book.  Bowles  had  almost  no  social  inter- 
course with  the  group ;  but  his  little  volume  of  melodious  and  gently 
melancholy  sonnets  was  the  idol  to  which  all  did  homage.  "As  much 
bad  criticism  as  you  please,"  cried  Coleridge  to  Holcroft  in  1794, 
"but  no  blasphemy  against  the  divinity  of  a  Bowles!''  Lloyd  has  two 
quotations  from  Bowles  in  the  Advertisement  to  the  poems  of  1795, 
and  a  third  prefixed  to  those  of  1797.  Wordsworth  in  1793  had  read 
his  sonnets  on  Westminster  bridge,  without  stirring  until  the  book 
was  finished.  Southey  in  1832  spoke  of  Bowles's  "sweet  and  un- 
sophisticated style;  upon  which  I  endeavored,  now  almost  forty 
years  ago,  to  form  my  own."  As  late  as  181 5  Coleridge  could  say, 
"The  being  so  near  him  has  been  a  source  of  constant  gratification 
to  me."  Lamb  in  1796  bracketed  Burns,  Bowles,  and  Cowper  as 
among  those  who  redeemed  poetry  from  the  charge  of  degeneracy; 
and  his  eight  sonnets  published  in  1797  have  several  reminiscences 
of  the  popular  sonneteer.  Warton's  distinctively  medieval  touch 
appears  more  rarely,  as  in  Southey's  sonnet 

Thou  ruined  relique  of  the  ancient  pile; 

in  Lovell's  on  Stonehenge: 

Was  it  a  spirit  on  yon  shapeless  pile? 

It  wore  methought  an  hoary  Druid's  form, 

Musing  on  ancient  days! 

or  in  that  of  Lloyd  on  Craig-Millar  Castle: 

This  hoary  labyrinth,  the  wreck  of  Time, 
Solicitous  with  timid  step  I  tread. 
Scale  the  stem  battlement,  or  vent'rous  climb 
Where  the  rent  watch-tower  bows  its  grassy  head. 

Another  bond  that  united  the  group  was  their  sympathy  with  the 
French  Revolution.  All  over  England  and  Scotland,  in  Edinburgh 
and  especially  in  London,  there  were  revolutionary  enthusiasts, 
organizations,  and  various  types  of  more  or  less  valuable  prose 

[49] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

literature;  but  nowhere  else  could  the  French  "citizen"  find  such 
a  nest  of  sympathizing  young  poets  as  around  Bristol.  Poole  had 
faced  social  ostracism  and  Thelwall  governmental  prosecution  for 
their  outspoken  opinions  on  this  head.  The  hero  of  Lloyd's  immature 
/"Oswald" 

V  Would  oft  with  shuddering  indignation  scan 

The  dark  abuses  of  the  social  plan; 

and  the  more  mature  Lloyd,  the  associate  of  Lamb  and  Southey, 
looked  forward  to  the  time 

when  equal  man 
Shall  deem  the  world  his  temple. 

Coleridge  in  1795  lectured  at  Bristol  on  the  French  Remhition. 
The  joint  play  on  that  subject  by  himself,  Southey,  and  Lovell, 
bears  out  the  statement  of  Cottle  that  "all  three  of  my  young  friends, 
in  that  day  of  excitement,  felt  ...  a  hearty  sympathy  with  the 
efforts  made  in  France  to  obtain  political  ameliorations."  Southey's 
worthless  drama  of  "Wat  Tyler,"  written  in  1794,  though  not  pub- 
'x     lished  for  many  years,  is  full  of  revolutionary  doctrine. 

/  What  matters  me  who  wears  the  crown  of  France? — 

/  Whether  a  Richard  or  a  Charles  possess  it? 

(  They  reap  the  glory,  they  enjoy  the  spoil: 

J  We  pay,  we  bleed.  The  sun  would  shine  as  cheerly, 

/  The  rains  of  heaven  as  seasonably  fall, 

I  Though  neither  of  these  royal  pests  existed; 

\      or  again: 

1  Why  are  not  all  these  empty  ranks  abolished; 

/  King,  slave,  and  lord,  ennobled  into  man? 

Are  we  not  equal  all? 

Wordsworth,  probably  in  the  same  year,  fresh  from  those  expe- 
riences on  the  continent  which  are  narrated  in  "The  Prelude," 
wrote:  "Hereditary  distinctions,  and  privileged  orders  of  every 
species,  I  think  must  necessarily  counteract  the  progress  of  human 
improvement;  hence  it  follows  that  I  am  not  amongst  the  admirers 

[  50  ] 


THE  EDDY  AROUND  BRISTOL 

of  the  British  Constitution."  Is  it  any  wonder  that  the  good  people 
of  Nether  Stowey  looked  askance  on  the  whole  set;  that  Words- 
worth was  practically  ordered  out  of  his  comfortable  quarters  at 
Alfoxden  by  the  scandalized  owner;  and  that  the  government 
hurried  down  a  spy  to  keep  watch  on  him  and  Coleridge  as  they 
lounged  among  the  sand-dunes,  composing  the  ^Xyrical  Ballads"? 
Hand  in  hand  with  the  feeling  of  these  authors  for  the  French - 
Revolution  went  their  enthusiasm  for  the  "return  to  nature"  taught 
by  Rousseau.  Other  poets,  like  Burns  and  Cowper,  had  written  about 
nature  when  circumstances  had  brought  them  in  touch  with  it;  but 
nowhere  else  in  English  poetry  had  there  been  such  an  organized 
expedition  to  find  it.  "Had  I,  my  dear  Collins,  the  pen  of  Rousseau," 
wrote  Southey  in  1793,  "I  would  attempt  to  describe  the  various 
scenes  which  have  presented  themselves  to  me,  and  the  various 
emotions  occasioned  by  them  .  .  .  What  scene  can  be  more  calcu- 
lated to  expand  the  soul  than  the  sight  of  nature,  in  all  her  loveliest 
works  ?"  More  simple  but  more  sincere  were  his  words  in  the  summer 
of  1797:  "You  know  not  how  infinitely  my  happiness  is  increased 
by  residing  in  the  country."  Coleridge  in  "Frost  at  Midnight"  re- 
joices that  his  babe  shall  not  grow  up  like  himself  in  a  town,  but  shall 

wander  like  a  breeze 
By  lakes  and  sandy  shores,  beneath  the  crags 
Of  ancient  mountain,  and  beneath  the  clouds 
Which  image  in  their  bulk  both  lakes  and  shores 
And  mountain  crags;  so  shalt  thou  see  and  hear 
The  lovely  shapes  and  sounds  intelligible 
Of  that  eternal  language,  which  thy  God 
Utters. 

The  unearthly  splendors  of  "Christabel"  and  "The  Ancient  Mari- 
ner" have  blinded  many  to  the  large  amount  of  nature  poetry  written 
by  Coleridge  in  this  period,  especially  his  blank  verse.  It  is  more 
negative  in  its  magic  than  the  wild  rhyming  masterpieces,  but  has 
all  the  charm  of  a  restful  landscape.  Still  more  has  the  nature 
element  been  overlooked  in  Southey's  "English  Eclogues,"  written 
in  1798  and  1799  chiefly  at  Westbury.  In  spite  of  their  limp  blank 
verse,  they  have  a  pleasant  aroma  of  humble  life,  and 

[  SI  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

sweet  brier,  scenting  sweet 
The  morning  air;  rosemary  and  marjoram, 
All  wholesome  herbs;  and  then,  that  woodbine  wreathed 
So  lavishly  around  the  pillared  porch. 

These  lines  are  from  "The  Ruined  Cottage,"  identical  in  title  with 
an  earlier  poem  by  Wordsworth,  afterwards  incorporated  in  "The 
Excursion."  Southey's  "Inscriptions"  of  this  period,  without  being 
great,  often  have  pleasing  rural  touches;  and  the  one  "For  the 
Cenotaph  at  Ermenonville"  reminds  us  that 

Rousseau 
Loved  these  calm  haunts  of  Solitude  and  Peace; 
Here  he  has  heard  the  murmurs  of  the  lake. 
And  the  soft  rustling  of  the  poplar  grove. 
When  o'er  its  bending  boughs  the  passing  wind 
Swept  a  gray  shade.  Here,  if  thy  breast  be  full, 
If  in  thine  eye  the  tear  devout  should  gush, 
His  spirit  shall  behold  thee,  to  thine  home 
From  hence  returning,  purified  of  heart. 

Joseph  Cottle's  "Malvern  Hills"  (1798),  the  nearest  thing  to 
respectable  poetry  that  he  ever  did,  is  mainly  a  description  of  land- 
scape beauties  in  the  historic  region  of  "Piers  Plowman's  Vision." 
The  blank  verse  is  woefully  flat,  but  some  of  the  word  pictures  are 
pleasing.  It  was  only  after  1800  that  Cottle  turned  to  impossible 
epics,  which  seem  a  reductio  ad  absurdum  of  the  work  of  his  fellow 
Bristowan  Southey,  and  made  his  long-suffering  critic  Lamb  cry 
out,  "My  God!"  During  his  earlier  period,  his  companions  accepted 
him  as  a  genuine  poet  and  felt  at  times  that  his 

modest  verse  to  musing  Quiet  dear 
Is  rich  with  tints  heaven-borrowed. 

Lloyd  was  also  a  preacher  of  the  return  to  nature,  but  of  a  differ- 
ent and  less  pleasing  return.  In  him  it  is  the  neurotic's  desire  to  flee 
from  the  conflicts  of  life,  seeking  in  nature,  not  its  beauty,  but  its 
restfulness,  not  a  Parnassus  but  a  sanatorium.  For  this  reason, 
though  he  writes  much  about  landscapes  he  is  both  vague  and 

[  52  ] 


THE  EDDY  AROUND  BRISTOL 

unsatisfactory;  and  his  best  work,  which  is  only  mediocre,  deals 
with  his  own  griefs  in  a  mood  more  sincere  than  wholesome.  His 
blank  verse  is  often  stilted;  but  at  times  like  Cowper  or  Words- 
worth, as  in  the  following  lines  about  his  former  home  and  dead 
mother  (written  December,  1796): 

No  taper  twinkled  cheerily  to  tell 
That  she  had  heap'd  the  hospitable  fire, 
Spread  the  trim  board,  and  with  an  anxious  heart 
Expected  me,  her  "dearest  boy,"  to  spend 
With  her  the  evening  hour!  Oh,  no!  'twas  gone, 
The  friendly  taper,  and  the  warm  fire's  glow. 

A  little  later  he  utters  a  passage  decidedly  Wordsworthian: 

Methinks  he  acts  the  purposes  of  life, 
And  fills  the  measure  of  his  destiny 
With  best  approved  wisdom,  who  retires 
To  some  majestic  solitude;  his  mind 
Rais'd  by  those  visions  of  eternal  love. 
The  rock,  the  vale,  the  forest,  and  the  lake. 
The  sky,  the  sea,  and  everlasting  hills. 

For  Wordsworth  a  few  years  earlier  there  had  been  a  time  when 
nature 

To  me  was  all  in  all — I  cannot  paint 
What  then  I  was.  The  sounding  cataract 
Haunted  me  like  a  passion; 

and  Dorothy  could  write  of  her  brother:  "He  is  never  so  happy  as 
when  in  a  beautiful  country."  By  1794  even  amid  the  landscape 
splendor  of  Keswick,  he  could  "begin  to  wish  much  to  be  in  Town. 
Cataracts  and  mountains  are  good  occasional  society,  but  they  will 
not  do  for  constant  companions";  and  by  the  time  "Tintern  Abbey" 
was  composed  he  had 

learned 
To  look  on  nature,  not  as  in  the  hour 
Of  thoughtless  youth;  but  hearing  oftentimes 
The  still,  sad  music  of  humanity. 

[  53  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

Yet  that  experience  only  drew  him  more  firmly  to  the  poetry  of  rural 
life.  He  had,  as  he  believed,  sifted  truth  from  error  in  Rousseau,  and 
found  the  truth  a  valuable  mental  leaven. 

Therefore  am  I  still 
A  lover  of  the  meadows  and  the  woods, 
And  mountains;  and  of  all  that  we  behold 
From  this  green  earth. 

Though  both  rural  and  provincial,  the  Bristol  Eddy  introduced 
more  foreign  influences  than  any  other  poetical  movement  during 
the  career  of  Napoleon.  We  have  already  seen  how  much  of  it  was 
"French.  A  marked  element  in  it  also  was  German.  Part  of  this  was 
caught  from  the  popular  German  current,  which  nobody  in  those 
years  escaped. 

Schiller,  that  hour  I  would  have  wished  to  die, 

cried  Coleridge  on  reading  "The  Robbers."  Wordsworth's  "Border- 
ers," written  just  before  he  joined  Coleridge,  and  begun  in  the  year 
in  which  Woodhouselee's  translation  of  "The  Robbers"  appeared, 
shows  many  traces  of  kinship  both  with  that  drama  and  with  the 
French  Revolution,  though,  like  all  the  author's  borrowings,  very 
much  Wordsworthized.  As  in  Schiller's  play  the  hero  is  a  romantic 
young  idealist  at  the  head  of  a  wild  band  of  freebooters;  in  both 
we  have  a  plotting  subordinate,  a  wronged  and  dying  old  man,  a 
tragic  love  affair  for  the  young  chief,  and  a  moderate  amount  of 
Gothic  ruin.  Coleridge's  "Osorio,"  which  he  read  to  Wordsworth 
soon  after  their  first  meeting,  with  its  overdone  passion  and  touches 
of  subterranean  horror,  was  probably  leavened  with  German  yeast. 
The  trip  which  the  two  men  made  late  in  1798  to  the  country  of 
Herder  and  Klopstock  was  the  result  of  past  enthusiasms  fully  as 
much  as  a  generator  of  new  ones.  Even  in  the  case  of  "The  Ancient 
Mariner"  Southey,  reviewing  it,  called  it  "a  Dutch  attempt  at  Ger- 
man sublimity."  To  a  reader  of  the  current  version  this  dictum  may 
seem  ridiculous;  but  if  he  turns  to  the  1798  edition  he  will  find  the 
criticism,  though  untrue,  by  no  means  unnatural.  There  was  a  minor 
element  of  the  Germano- Gothic  in  the  original  wording  of  "The 

[  54  ] 


THE  EDDY  AROUND  BRISTOL 

Ancient  Mariner,"  which  was  sloughed  off  in  later  revision.  Lines 
such  as 

His  bones  were  black  with  many  a  crack, 
All  black  and  bare,  I  ween; 
Jet-black  and  bare,  save  where  with  rust 
Of  mouldy  damps  and  chamel  crust 
They're  patched  with  purple  and  green; 

or 

A  gust  of  wind  sterte  up  behind 

And  whistled  through  his  bones; 

Thro'  the  holes  of  his  eyes  and  the  hole  of  his  mouth, 

Half  whistles  and  half  groans, 

make  one  think  of  the  spectral  bridegroom  in  Biirger's  "Lenore." 
Coleridge  in  1796  had  planned  writing  a  life  of  Jacob  Boehme,  the 
Bohemian  mystic  who  so  influenced  Blake;  and  it  may  be  that  that 
mysticism  of  which  his  contemporaries  complained  so  bitterly  was 
already  beginning  to  flow  in  from  a  foreign  channel. 

A  separate  German  influence  was  at  work  on  Southey.  Probably 
the  foremost  leader  in  scholarly,  as  opposed  to  melodramatic,  impor- 
tation of  Teutonic  literature  was  William  Taylor  of  Norwich,  who, 
according  to  Professor  Beers,  "did  more  than  any  man  of  his  gene- 
ration, by  his  translations  and  critical  papers  in  The  Monthly 
Magazine  and  Monthly  Review,  to  spread  a  knowledge  of  the  new 
German  literature  in  England."  Southey  had  read  his  translation 
of  ''Lenore"  and  "the  other  ballad  of  BUrger,  in  Monthly  Maga- 
zine," which  "is  most  excellent,"  by  July,  1796.  In  1798  the  two 
men  were  introduced,  and  began  a  correspondence,  chiefly  on 
literary  subjects.  Even  before  their  meeting  Southey  was  already 
acquainted  with  Taylor's  writings,  so  that  the  influence  on  him  must 
have  been  almost  continuous  during  the  last  four  years  of  the  cen- 
tury. "You  have  made  me  hunger  and  thirst  after  German  poetry," 
wrote  Southey  to  his  new  friend  in  1799.  The  prefatory  note  to  the 
"English  Eclogues"  tells  us  that  the  poet  was  inspired  to  compose 
them  "by  what  was  told  me  of  the  German  Idyls  by  my  friend  Mr. 
William  Taylor  of  Norwich."  He  adds  (in  1799)  that  they  "bear 

[  55  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

no  resemblance  to  any  poems  in  our  language,"  which  in  a  sense  is 
true;  and  yet  they  constantly  remind  one  of  Wordsworth.  A  very 
different  atmosphere,  that  of  the  Germano- Gothic,  mixed  with  the 
influence  of  Percy's  "Reliques,"  is  felt  in  Southey's  Ballads  and 
Metrical  Tales,  most  of  which  were  written  between  1796  and  1798. 
M.  G.  Lewis  included  his  "Old  Woman  of  Berkeley"  and  "St. 
Patrick's  Purgatory,"  without  his  consent,  in  the  "Tales  of  Won- 
der"; and  "the  metre  is  Mr.  Lewis's  invention"  in  "Mary,  the  Maid 
of  the  Inn." 

Behind  a  wide  column,  half  breathless  with  fear, 

She  crept  to  conceal  herself  there: 
That  instant  the  moon  o'er  a  dark  cloud  shone  clear, 
And  she  saw  in  the  moonlight  two  ruffians  appear, 

And  between  them  a  corpse  did  they  bear. 

The  author  is  usually  serious,  at  times  humorous,  but  at  his  best  in 
a  mood  between  the  two,  like  that  of  Burns's  "Tam  O'Shanter,"  as 
in  his  thoroughly  enjoyable  "Old  Woman  of  Berkeley": 

And  in  He  came  with  eyes  of  flame, 

The  Devil,  to  fetch  the  dead; 
And  all  the  church  with  his  presence  glowed 

Like  a  fiery  furnace  red. 

In  Lewis's  "Monk"  the  reader  does  not  know  whether  to  yield  him- 
self up  to  the  intended  shudder  or  the  instinctive  joy  of  ridicule; 
in  Southey  he  can  enjoy  both  at  once,  so  evenly  are  humor  and 
seriousness  blended.  There  was  none  too  much  intercourse  after 
1797  between  Southey  and  his  brother-in-law  Coleridge,  whose 
irregular  habits  he  justly  condemned,  and  who  had  never  quite 
forgiven  him  for  abandoning  Pantisocracy;  nevertheless  part  of 
Taylor's  influence  may  have  filtered  through  the  author  of  the 
"English  Eclogues"  to  the  authors  of  the  "Lyrical  Ballads."  Several 
of  the  Eclogues  and  of  the  Metrical  Tales  also,  were  sent  for  criti- 
cism in  the  autumn  of  1798  to  Lamb,  who  was  in  friendly  corre- 
spondence with  both  Westbury  and  Nether  Stowey. 

Another  badge  of  the  Bristol  movement,  and  the  one  that  roused 
most  discussion,  was  the  advocacy  of  simple  as  opposed  to  "poetic" 

[  56  ] 


THE  EDDY  AROUND  BRISTOL 

diction.  Though  badly  stated  and  carried  to  excess,  the  theories  of 
Wordsworth  and  his  friends  were  that  voice  of  the  people  which  in 
literature  is  so  often  the  voice  of  God.  To  understand  them,  how- 
ever, one  must  realize  what  they  attacked.  The  object  of  their 
hostility  was  not  mainly  Pope  but  Pope's  late  eighteenth-century 
imitators,  who  were  carrying  to  ever  more  hollow  fatuity  a  literary 
tradition  gone  to  seed.  Coleridge  was  at  once  contemptuous  toward 
"the  ignoramuses  and  Pope-admirers,"  and  willing  to  include  Pope 
himself  among  the  "great  single  names."  Johnson  in  prose  and 
writers  like  Erasmus  Darwin  in  poetry  had  "elevated"  the 
homely  Anglo-Saxon  until  a  reaction  was  inevitable.  "I  abso- 
lutely nauseate  Darwin's  poems,"  declared  Coleridge  as  early  as 
1796.  Mackenzie  lamented  that  Johnson's  greatest  fault  was  in  re- 
jecting every  word  from  the  Saxon.  Richard  Sharp,  who  in  1787  read 
a  paper  before  the  Manchester  society  on  the  Nature  and  Utility  of 
Eloquence,  was  a  fervent  advocate  of  the  simple  style  as  opposed 
to  Johnsonian  pedantry.  "Johnsonism,"  he  said,  "has  become  almost 
a  general  disease."  Wordsworth  considered  Chesterfield,  the  con- 
temporary of  Pope,  as  the  last  great  prose  writer  in  English  before 
Johnson  "vitiated  the  language."  This  was  in  prose,  not  poetry; 
but  the  two  types  of  literature  are  bound  to  influence  each  other. 
The  French  Revolution  by  emphasizing  popular  rights  had  put  a 
premium  on  the  language  of  the  people;  and  this,  combined  with  the 
decay  of  neo-classicism,  produced  a  rebound  not  confined  to  Eng- 
land. Crabb  Robinson  in  1803  lent  Herder  Wordsworth's  "Lyrical 
Ballads,"  and  "found  that  Herder  agreed  with  Wordsworth  as  to 
poetical  language.  Indeed  Wordsworth's  notions  on  that  subject  are 
quite  German." 

In  the  case  of  Coleridge,  and  to  some  degree  of  Wordsworth, 
simple  language  was  a  reaction  from  the  turgid  or  stilted  phrase- 
ology of  their  own  earlier  poems.  They  worded  the  declaration  of 
poetic  independence;  but  it  is  a  question  if  the  Bristol  group  as  a 
body  had  not  helped  evolve  it.  Lamb  had  been  preaching  a  certain 
kind  of  simplicity  at  least  to  the  bombastic  Coleridge  for  two  years. 
"Cultivate  simplicity,  Coleridge,  or  rather,  I  should  say,  banish 
elaborateness"  (1796).  "Write  thus  .  .  .  and  I  shall  never  quarrel 

[  57  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

with  you  about  simplicity"  (1796).  "I  will  enumerate  some  woeful 
blemishes,  some  of  'em  sad  deviations  from  that  simplicity  which 
was  your  aim"  (1797).  Wordsworth  declared  that  he  "never  cared 
a  straw  about  the  'theory/  and  the  'preface'  was  written  at  the 
request  of  Mr.  Coleridge,  out  of  sheer  good  nature."  If  Words- 
worth's later  defence  of  the  Preface  was  due  to  North  Country 
obstinacy  rather  than  esthetic  conviction,  the  ultimate  germ  of  the 
much  discussed  "theory"  might  be  traced  back  to  the  gentle  Elia. 
Lamb's  own  poetry  is  usually  quite  free  from  the  artificial  phrase, 
as  in  the  following: 

A  wayward  son  ofttimes  was  I  to  thee: 

And  yet,  in  all  our  little  bickerings, 

Domestic  jars,  there  was,  I  know  not  what 

Of  tender  feeling,  that  were  ill  exchanged 

For  this  world's  chilling  friendships,  and  their  smiles 

Familiar,  whom  the  heart  calls  strangers  still. 

Southey  (November,  1797)  quotes  these  lines  with  approval,  and 
adds:  "I  am  aware  of  the  danger  of  studying  simplicity  of  lan- 
guage— but  you  will  find  in  my  blank  verse  a  fulness  of  phrase  when 
the  subject  requires  it,"  indicating  that  Southey  advocated  homely 
language  for  homely  themes,  as  his  practice  indicates. 

So  much  for  the  general  phenomena  of  the  Bristol  Eddy,  in  which 
the  exacts  limits  between  individual  and  communal  activity  can 
never  be  determined.  A  few  words  may  be  added  on  such  works  of 
each  poet  as  have  not  already  been  considered.  Poole  wrote  no 
poetry;  and  the  verse  of  Thelwall  was  so  exceedingly  bad  that  had 
he  been  condemned  for  literary  instead  of  political  sins  we  should 
all  sympathize  with  his  judges.  Enough  has  been  said  about  the 
perishable  rhyming  ware  of  Lovell,  Lloyd,  and  the  Cottles.  A  word 
further  should  be  added,  however,  about  Joseph  Cottle  as  a  publisher. 
He  was  a  vain  man,  and  in  his  "Reminiscences"  tried  to  make  the 
public  consider  him  too  much  of  a  Maecenas,  with  the  result  that  it 
has  considered  him  too  much  of  an  ass.  No  one  can  read  the  corre- 
spondence of  the  Bristol  and  Lake  poets  without  feeling  their  gen- 
uine friendliness  toward  him;  and  as  business  man  and  financial 
\  backer  he  must  have  given  the  literary  movement  a  decided  impetus. 

^  [  58  ] 


THE  EDDY  AROUND  BRISTOL 

He  published  practically  everything  printed  by  the  Bristol  authors 
between  1796  and  1798,  and  apparently  on  better  terms  than  any 
one  else  would  offer  them.  He  could  hardly  have  grown  rich  from 
these  transactions,  for  in  the  autumn  of  1798  he  quit  the  publishing) 
business — gave  up  the  selling  of  poetry  for  the  uninterrupted  com- 
position of  it,  thereby  inflicting  a  double  wound  on  the  Muses.  It') 
is  hard  to  take  his  authorship  seriously;  but  there  is  reason  to  believe 
that  he  encouraged  far  better  poetry  than  he  wrote.  In  a  letter  which 
all  detractors  of  honest  Joseph  should  read,  Southey  wrote  to  him 
April  20,  1808:  ''You  bought  them  [his  copyrights]  on  the  chance 
of  their  success,  which  no  London  bookseller  would  have  done;  and 
had  they  not  been  bought,  they  could  not  have  been  published  at 
all.  Nay,  if  you  had  not  purchased  'Joan  of  Arc,'  the  poem  never 
would  have  existed,  nor  should  I,  in  all  probability,  ever  have  ob- 
tained that  reputation  which  is  the  capital  on  which  I  subsist,  nor 
that  power  which  enables  me  to  support  it.  .  .  .  Your  house  was 
my  house  when  I  had  no  other.  The  very  money  with  which  I  bought 
my  wedding-ring  and  paid  my  marriage  fees,  was  supplied  by  yom 
It  was  with  your  sisters  that  I  left  Edith  during  my  six  months} 
absence,  and  for  the  six  months  after  my  return  it  was  from  yoij 
that  I  received,  week  by  week,  the  little  on  which  we  lived,  till  I 
was  enabled  to  live  by  other  means.  .  .  .  Sure  I  am,  there  never  wai 
a  more  generous  or  a  kinder  heart  than  yours;  and  you  will  believ^ 
me  when  I  add,  that  there  does  not  live  that  man  upon  earth  whom 
I  remember  with  more  gratitude  and  more  affection."  According  to 
Cottle  also,  Coleridge  wrote  on  the  blank  leaf  of  his  own  early 
poems:  "Had  it  not  been  for  you,  none,  perhaps,  of  them  would  have 
been  published,  and  many  not  written."  The  statements  of  the  ex- 
publisher  are  "a  vain  thing  for  safety";  but  we  read  in  Coleridge's 
letter  to  him  that  spring:  "I  feel  what  I  owe  you,  and  independently 
of  this  I  love  you  as  a  friend."  Half  a  century  later  the  aged  Words- 
worth wrote  to  Cottle:  "And  now  let  me  bid  you  affectionately 
good-bye,  with  assurance  that  I  do  and  shall  retain  to  the  last  a 
remembrance  of  your  kindness  and  of  the  many  pleasant  and  happy 
hours  which,  at  one  of  the  most  interesting  periods  of  my  life,  I 
passed  in  your  neighborhood  and  in  your  company." 

[  59  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

No  one  can  judge  the  verse  of  Lamb  without  remembering  the 
circumstances  under  which  it  was  composed.  Gradgrind  routine  and 
domestic  calamity  had  clutched  him  as  between  the  jaws  of  a  trap 
and  would  have  crushed  the  sublimely  evanescent  vision  in  any  one. 
His  period  of  comparative  leisure  came  late  in  life  when  many  men 
can  write  good  prose  but  few  good  poetry,  and  so  he  became  a  great 
essayist,  only  a  minor  poet;  yet  we  are  not  sure  that  this  was  what 
nature  intended.  London  society  he  had  practically  none;  his  epis- 
tolary relations  with  Stowey  and  Bristol  were  his  social  all-in-all. 

Alone,  obscure,  without  a  friend, 
A  cheerless,  solitary  thing, 

the  wonder  is  that  he  accomplished  what  he  did.  Out  of  the  bitter- 
ness of  broken  friendships,  and  few  to  break,  he  distilled  at  least 
one  undying  poem,  "The  Old  Familiar  Faces";  and  his  drama  of 
"John  Woodvil,"  unspeakably  bad  in  construction,  has  yet  many 
charming  lines  that  carry  us  back  to  the  forest  of  Arden  and  the 
great  dramatist  that  Lamb  imitated  so  crudely  but  so  sincerely. 

In  connection  with  this  play  we  may  notice  the  amount  of  closet 
drama  produced  by  the  Bristol  and  Stowey  writers.  In  addition  to 
Wordsworth's  "Borderers,"  Coleridge's  "Osorio,"  and  Lamb's  "John 
Woodvil,"  which  was  begun  in  the  year  of  the  "Lyrical  Ballads," 
Lloyd  in  that  same  year  wrote  his  dull  drama  "The  Duke 
D'Ormond,"  although  this  was  not  published  until  1822,  when  it 
appeared  as  part  of  a  new  and  greater  wave  of  unactable  poetical 
tragedies. 

Of  Southey  there  is  more  to  say,  both  in  praise  and  blame.  Most 
of  his  short  poems  and  half  of  his  long  ones  were  composed  during 
the  Bristol  period.  His  "Joan  of  Arc,"  published  in  1796,  is  now 
his  most  unreadable  volume,  but  curiously  enough  during  his  early 
life  was  the  most  popular  of  his  works.  In  fact  for  all  the  poetry  of 
this  group  public  applause  seemed  inversely  as  merit.  Coleridge's 
uneven  and  turgid  early  work  got  not  only  better  sales  but  better 
reviews  than  "The  Ancient  Mariner,"  and  more  favorable  comment 
from  his  fellow  poets.  In  such  a  discerning  critic  as  Lamb — though 
he  was  young  then — "Joan"  roused  a  burst  of  enthusiasm  that 

[  60  ] 


THE  EDDY  AROUND  BRISTOL 

to-day  makes  us  doubt  our  eyesight.  Was  it  the  halo  of  the  French 
Revolution  which  gave  such  a  factitious  value  to  the  story  of 
medieval  France  in  her  struggle  for  liberty,  or  was  Lamb  blinded 
by  friendship  and  the  public  by  stupidity?  This  was  the  first  of 
Sou  they 's  long  epics.  ^'Madoc/'  second  in  composition  though  not 
in  publication,  was  a  better  but  very  ponderous  work.  He  had  had 
it  in  his  mind  ever  since  he  was  fourteen.  It  was  to  be  the  pillar  of 
his  reputation.  For  years  he  had  looked  over  the  neighboring  Welsh 
hills,  dreaming  of  that  Cymric  forerunner  of  Columbus,  and  had 
developed  a  story  with  a  magnificent  opportunity  for  romantic 
atmosphere,  the  first  half  being  in  medieval  Wales,  the  second  among 
the  Aztec  Indians  of  North  America.  But  that  very  opportunity 
showed  what  the  poem  lacked.  Its  appeal  is  almost  wholly  to  intet" 
lectual  curiosity,  neither  to  the  emotions  nor  the  ear.  Haunting 
cadences,  poignant  pathos,  outbursts  of  rapture  it  has  not  to  give. 
For  the  patient  professorial  brain  "Madoc"  is  not  unreadable,  but 
its  attractions  are  those  of  a  book  of  travel,  its  best  remembered 
passages  the  ones  describing  Indian  customs  and  accouterments. 
And  the  appeal  to  intellectual  curiosity  can  hold  only  when  based 
on  facts,  not  on  figments  of  the  imagination.  A  similar  criticism 
could  be  passed  on  all  Southey^s  long  poems;  yet  "Thalaba,"  written 
half  near  Bristol  and  half  in  Spain,  has  much  subdued  music  and 
much  delight  of  wandering  through 

perilous  seas  in  faery  lands  forlorn. 

There  are  many  passages  to  which  we  gladly  recur;  but  a  long  nar- 
rative poem,  like  a  drama,  must  depend  on  its  human  interest  to 
carry  it;  and  here  no  human  interest,  not  even  an  allegorical  one, 
is  genuinely  felt.  Reading  "Thalaba"  is  like  wandering  from  room 
to  room  in  a  deserted  palace,  with  the  gleam  of  marble,  the  beauty 
of  carvings,  dim  figures  on  wavering  curtains,  and  only  the  monoto- 
nous echo  of  our  own  footsteps  from  chamber  to  chamber.  Southey 
has  been  condemned  for  stubborn  wrong-headedness  in  thus  per- 
severing with  his  epic  series.  That  he  was  on  the  wrong  track  is 
unquestionable;  but  with  Lamb  saying  a  propos  of  "Joan,"  "On 
the  whole,  I  expect  Southey  one  day  to  rival  Milton";  with  Cole- 

[6i  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

ridge  writing  of  "Madoc,"  "I  feel  as  certain,  as  my  mind  dare  feel 
on  any  subject,  that  it  would  lift  you  with  a  spring  into  a  reputation 
that  would  give  immediate  sale  to  your  after  compositions";  and 
with  William  Taylor  (and  Landor  later  on)  urging  him  to  follow 
in  the  epic  footsteps  of  Milton  and  Klopstock, — we  cannot  feel  that 
the  fault  was  wholly  Southey's.  The  Bristol  Eddy  had  helped  whirl 
him  into  the  wrong  course  and  produced  from  him  three  epics  in 
half  a  decade,  whereas  he  produced  only  two  more  during  over  forty 
years. 

In  1799  and  1800  when  the  sudden  poetical  harvest  was  ending, 
Southey  garnered  its  last  ears  in  his  "Annual  Anthology."  Some 
of  the  contributions  are  from  forgotten  minors,  and  others  from 
Mrs.  Opie,  then  just  on  the  eve  of  her  career  as  a  novelist. 
Most  of  them,  however,  are  from  men  connected  with  the  Bristol 
Eddy,  Southey,  Lamb,  Lloyd,  Coleridge,  Southey's  friend  William 
Taylor,  Lamb's  friend  George  Dyer,  Humphry  Davy,  then  a  young 
and  poetical  scientist,  who  came  to  Bristol  just  after  the  departure 
of  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge,  besides  posthumous  poems  of  Lovell. 
In  1803  Southey  very  appropriately  closed  the  Bristol  chapter  of 
his  career  by  editing  with  Cottle  the  poetry  of  Chatter  ton. 

Before  passing  on  to  the  two  greatest  members  of  the  eddy,  we 
must  pause  a  moment  for  that  prose  poetess  who  did  so  much  to 
inspire  them  both,  Dorothy  Wordsworth.  During  the  Stowey  period, 
she,  her  brother,  and  Coleridge  were,  in  the  words  of  Professor 
Harper,  "three  persons  and  one  soul." 

She  gave  me  eyes,  she  gave  me  ears, 

said  her  grateful  brother;  and  observations  of  nature  found  in  her 
Journal  turn  up  again  in  "Christabel."  She  has  left  us  no  enduring 
poetry  of  her  own;  but  in  the  last  analysis  did  she  not  do  a  greater 
work  for  English  verse  than  Joanna  Baillie  or  Mrs.  Hemans? 

The  poems  of  Coleridge  during  his  Bristol  and  Nether  Stowey 
period  are  enduring  memorials  of  three  brief  stages  in  the  rapid 
unfolding  of  his  genius.  The  first  class  are  rather  bookish  echoes  of 
late  eighteenth-century  movements,  the  supposedly  Pindaric  ode  on 
"The  Departing.. Year,"  turgid  blank  verse  in  the  style  of  eighteenth- 

[  62  ] 


THE  EDDY  AROUND  BRISTOL 

century  Miltonians,  as  in  the  "Religious  Musings,"  and  sonnets 
which  he  frankly  entitled  as  imitations  of  Bowles.  The  second  class 
comprises  blank  verse  descriptions  of  nature  in  more  sweet  and 
homely  language,  with  less  of  bad  philosophy  and  much  more  of 
good  observation,  "The  Nightingale"  and  "This  Lime  Tree  Bower 
My  Prison."  Both  of  these  types  are  paralleled  in  the  verse  of  his 
associates.  Last  comes  the  splendid  output  of  his  one  annus  mirabilis, 
the  brief  harvest  on  which  his  reputation  depends:  "The  Ancient 
Mariner,"  "Christabel,"  "Kubla  Khan,"  "The  Three  Graves," 
"Love,"  and  the  similar,  though  inferior  "Ballad  of  the  Dark  Ladie." 
These  in  musical  key  are  related  to  Wordsworth's  output  during 
the  same  period,  a  result  of  the  same  close  intimacy.  All  these  poems 
of  Coleridge,  and  every  one  written  by  Wordsworth  at  Alfoxden,* 
including  "Peter  Bell,"  are  in  iambic  8's  or  8's  and  6's  closely  akin 
to  the  swing  of  the  old  ballad.  Neither  of  these  men  used  that  rhythm 
so  consistently  at  any  other  time.  The  favorite  metre  for  Words- 
worth and  Coleridge  alike,  whether  before  or  after  this  period,  was 
the  pentameter  line,  which  both  used  in  sonnet,  couplet,  stanza,  and 
blank  verse.  Also  in  both  poets  at  this  time  the  language  takes  on 
a  simplicity  not  characteristic  of  the  man.  Coleridge,  not  only  before 
but  after  this  period,  not  only  in  verse  but  in  prose  and  in  private 
correspondence,  had  an  elaborate,  at  times  a  turgid,  style.  The 
poetical  diction  of  Wordsworth,  starting  from  the  rhetorical  heights 
of  Erasmus  Darwin,  descended  into  the  valley  of  humility  in  the 
"Lyrical  Ballads,"  and  for  nearly  twenty  years  afterward  climbed  a 
gradual  ascent  toward  the  dignified  language  of  IVJiJjjpn.  The  Stowey 
period  represents  what  is  best  in  Coleridge,  what  is  second  best  in 
Wordsworth,  but  not  what  is  typical  in  either.  It  was  not  the  perma- 
nent Wordsworth,  the  disciple  of  Milton,  the  dignified  author  of 
"Michael,"  but  a  temporary  experimenting  Wordsworth,  who  wrote 
of  a  woman's  grief: 

It  dried  her  body  like  a  cinder, 

And  almost  turned  her  brain  to  tinder.f 

*  He  wrote  "Tintem  Abbey"  after  leaving  Alfoxden. 
t  "The  Thorn,"  original  version. 

[  63  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

The  peculiar  characteristics  in  the  verse  of  this  period  must  be 
partly  due  to  the  influence  of  Percy's  "Reliques."  They  were  not 
confined  to  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge.  Southey,  who  enumerates  the 
"Reliques"  among  the  books  that  influenced  his  growing  mind, 
between  1796  and  1800  wrote  a  number  of  poems  which  he  also 
called  ^'ballads,"  several  of  which  were  in  the  regular  8's  and  6's  of 
'The  Ancient  Mariner,"  ''The  Three  Graves,"  and  "We  Are  Seven." 
Southey's  ballads  have  no  great  merit,  and  deal  in  a  rather  crude 
supernaturalism  unlike  either  the  airy  fictions  of  "Christabel"  or  the 
homespun  realities  of  "Goody  Blake."  Yet  they  diverge  from  the 
previous  and  subsequent  manner  of  the  author  as  do  the  poems  of 
his  friends,  and  do  occasionally  suggest  these: 

The  night  was  calm,  the  night  was  dark; 

No  star  was  in  the  sky; 
The  wind  it  waved  the  willow  boughs; 

The  stream  flowed  quietly. 

The  night  was  calm,  the  air  was  still; 

Sweet  sung  the  nightingale: 
The  soul  of  Jonathan  was  soothed; 

His  heart  began  to  fail. 

Incidentally  in  1800  Lamb  composed  two  poems  entitled  "Ballads" 
sufficiently  unlike  those  of  his  friends,  but  the  only  ballad  imitations 
that  he  is  known  to  have  written.  The  ballad  type  appears  in  Southey 
in  1796,  in  Coleridge  1797,  in  Wordsworth  1798,  suggesting  a  very 
natural  channel  for  more  than  one  form  of  influence:  from  some 
other  member  of  the  group  to  Coleridge,  then  from  Coleridge  to 
his  friend.  The  original  version  of  "The  Ancient  Mariner"  bor- 
rowed several  archaic  words  from  Percy's  eighteenth-century  "Sir 
Cauline":  and  the  "fair  Christabelle"  of  the  same  ballad  may  have 
mothered  the  "sweet  Christabel"  of  the  greater  genius.  The  sudden 
vogue  of  Biirger's  "Lenore"  in  1796  had  quickened  interest  in  folk 
poetry. 

Many  characteristics  of  the  "Lyrical  Ballads"  must  also  have 
owed  something  to  local  atmosphere.  The  low,  though  beautiful, 
Quantock  hills,  the  emotional  and  obsequious  peasant  of  the  south- 

[64] 


THE  EDDY  AROUND  BRISTOL 

west,  as  shown  in  "Simon  Lee"  and  "The  Last  of  the  Flock,"  are 
in  marked  contrast  with  the  frowning  peaks  of  Cumberland,  and  the 
silent  pride  of  her  poor,  the  men  of  "Michael"  and  "The  Brothers." 
All  that  gets  into  the  blood.  This  is  especially  true  of  a  landscape 
lover  such  as  Wordsworth,  whose  poetry,  both  in  rhythm  and 
mood,  changes  with  the  scenery  through  which  he  travels.  He  has  one 
set  of  metres  and  thoughts  on  Highland  heather,  another  by  his 
native  lakes,  and  a  third  at  Nether  Stowey.  The  restful  charm  of  the 
rolling  country  has  crept  into  his  metre  and  diction,  and  into  his 
conception  of  character  also.  In  his  "Lyrical  Ballads"  the  emphasis 
is  laid  on  the  pathos,  not  the  dignity,  of  the  poor  man's  life;  in  the 
later  "Michael,"  "The  Brothers,"  "The  Leech  Gatherer,"  and  the 
sixth  and  seventh  books  of  "The  Excursion,"  the  emphasis  is  re- 
versed. His  "ballads"  have  grown  like  plants  from  the  soil  of  the 
West  Country,  and  the  germ  of  almost  every  one  of  them  can  be 
found  in  some  definite  locality  or  incident  there.  As  for  Coleridge, 
although  he  was  Anglo-Saxon  in  blood,  his  family  had  lived  in  a 
region  full  of  Celtic  people  and  Celtic  traditions;  there  is  a  Welsh  or 
Irish  glamour  about  the  rarest  of  his  poetry:  and  perhaps  he  could 
do  his  best  work  on  the  borderland  of  the  Cymric  peoples.  We  read 
in  Mr.  Salmon's  book  that  a  "characteristic  that  links  tie  Quantocks 
with  the  farther  West,  is  the  presence  of  pixies.  The  pixy  is  the  spe- 
cial Celtic  variant  of  the  ordinary  fairy  or  elf,  and  it  only  lingers  now 
in  the  West  of  England.  Its  chief  homes  are  on  Dartmoor,  and  in 
Cornwall;  but  its  presence  on  Exmoor,  and  the  Quantocks  prove  con- 
tinuance of  Celtic  tradition.  .  .  .  Within  living  memory  a  farmer  is 
said  to  have  seen  some  threshing  his  corn,  in  a  bam  near  Holford 
village."  The  village  in  question  is  close  to  Alfoxden.  Hazlitt  records 
that  Coleridge  at  Nether  Stowey  complained  because  Wordsworth 
"was  not  prone  enough  to  believe  in  the  traditional  superstitions  of 
the  place."  Certainly  there  is  a  magic  about  the  first  part  of  "Chris- 
tabel,"  written  at  Nether  Stowey,  which  is  missing  from  the  second, 
composed  among  the  Lakes,  and  the  difference  may  not  be  wholly 
due  to  opium.  In  sharp  contrast  to  the  fairy  tales  of  Stowey,  Pro- 
fessor Harper  says  that  "few  mountainous  regions  in  old  populated 
countries  are  so  unblessed  with  legends  as  the  English  Lake  district. 

[  65  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

It  has  virtually  no  local  folk-songs."  So,  although  in  one  sense 
"Christabel"  and  "The  Ancient  Mariner"  belong  to  the  most  un- 
localized  type  of  poetry,  they  originated  in  a  district  favorable  to 
their  nature.  It  was  to  the  song  of  the  nightingale  at  dark  and  the 
deep  bass  of  the  ocean  by  day,  against  a  background  of  fairy  legend 
and  unruined  local  faith  that  they 

Rose  like  an  exhalation,  with  the  sound 
Of  dulcet  symphonies  and  voices  sweet. 

One  feature  of  the  Bristol  Eddy  which  has  never  been  emphasized 
is  that  it  was  financially  a  subsidized  movement.  In  January,  1798, 
the  Wedgewood  brothers  began  their  annual  payment  to  Coleridge 
of  £150  a  year,  that  he  might  be  free  to  write  poetry,  and  before 
that  he  had  received  financial  aid  from  Lloyd,  who  was  wealthy. 
^Wordsworth  since  1795  had  been  living  mainly  on  the  income  from 
£900  left  him  by  Raisley  Calvert.  Genuine  assistance  was  given  by 
'Cottle  to  both  Coleridge  and  Southey.  All  this  may  appear  very 
sordid  to  people  who  condemn  economics;  it  would  not  to  Words- 
worth himself,  who  in  his  sonnet  "To  the  Memory  of  Raisley  Cal- 
vert" said  that  the  legacy  made  his  poetical  career  possible: 

That  I,  if  frugal  and  severe,  might  stray 
Where'er  I  liked;  and  finally  array 
My  temples  with  the  Muse's  diadem. 

And  it  was  the  man  who  received  no  such  aid,  who  was  under  the 
financial  pressure  from  which  the  others  were  free,  Charles  Lamb, 
who  during  this  period,  and  for  many  years  after,  produced  the  work 
least  worthy  of  his  powers. 

The  literary  activity  around  Bristol  represented  neither  a  school 
nor  an  enduring  social  group  nor  a  definitely  formed  theory  of  art. 
It  did  give  encouragement  and  inspiration.  It  did  form  individual 
friendships  that  lasted  till  death;  and  through  these  it  passed  on  the 
torch  of  poetical  enthusiasm  to  later  groups  and  schools.  It  began 
a  new  rigime  in  poetry,  not  by  its  critical  theories  but  by  the  encour- 
agement of  genius.  What  Burns  and  Blake,  Chatterton  and  Cowper 

[  66  ] 


THE  EDDY  AROUND  BRISTOL 

groping  alone  had  failed  to  do,  was  done  at  last;  and  a  new  creative 
era  for  literature  began 

On  sea-ward  Quantock's  heathy  hills, 
Where  quiet  sounds  from  hidden  rills 

Float  here  and  there,  like  things  astray, 
And  high  o'er  head  the  skylark  shrills. 


[  67  ] 


CHAPTER  III 

The  Scotch  Group  and  the  Antiquarian  Movement 
in  Poetry  (^1800-1805  and  thereafter) 

The  end  of  the  eighteenth  century  and  beginning  of  the  nineteenth 
found  almost  all  creative  poetry  of  high  rank  active  in  two  small 
areas:  around  and  to  the  southwest  of  Bristol — with  allowance  for 
the  fact  that  Wordsworth  moved  in  the  interim  to  Westmoreland; 
and  around  and  to  the  southwest  of  Edinburgh.  By  1795  the  best 
poetry  of  Burns,  Cowper,  and  Blake  was  already  written,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  fact  that  the  latter  was  utterly  unknown.  Crabbe  was 
in  the  midst  of  his  twenty-year  silence,  Rogers  in  the  midst  of  one 
almost  equally  long.  Byron  had  not  risen,  and  Moore  had  not  found 
himself.  At  the  Scottish  capital  Campbell  in  1799  gave  the  world 
his  ^'Pleasures  of  Hope";  and  near  by  a  little  knot  of  young  Scotch- 
men, with  whom  Campbell  came  in  contact  but  to  whom  he  did  not 
belong,  laid  the  foundation  for  a  new  literary  development  in  some 
ways  like,  in  others  markedly  unlike,  that  around  the  banks  of  the 
Severn. 

The  Bristol  and  northern  eddies  had  certain  features  in  common. 
Both  were  made  up  of  young  men.  Both  developed  a  tendency 
toward  simple  language  in  poetry.  Both  showed  in  metre  and  other 
respects  the  influence  of  Percy's  "Reliques."  Both  were  temporarily 
affected  by  the  popular  German  wave  and  later  shook  off  a  large 
part  of  its  influence.  Yet  not  less  fundamental  than  the  likenesses 
were  the  differences  between  them.  The  Bristol  authors  were  revo- 
lutionary and  permeated  with  French  and  German  thought;  the 
other  body  conservative  and  traditionally  Scotch,  even  provincial, 
in  their  outlook  on  life.  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge  were  interested 
in  abstract  philosophy  looking  toward  the  future;  the  Scotch  writers 

[  68  ] 


THE  SCOTCH  GROUP 

in  concrete  research  revealing  the  past.  The  southern  poets  were 
often  introspective  and  at  times  melancholy;  the  northern  ones,  in 
their  writings  at  least,  objective  and  energetically  serene,  and  as 
men  more  athletic  in  body  and  more  martial  in  spirit  than  Lamb, 
Lloyd,  Southey,  and  Coleridge.  Each  eddy  began  independently; 
the  Bristol  and  Stowey  poets  hearing  nothing  of  their  Scottish 
brethren  before  1802,  and  their  Scottish  brethren  knowing  but  little 
of  them  until  after  that  date. 

The  center  and  leader  of  the  northern  group  was,  of  course, 
Walter  Scott;  but  it  would  be  untrue  to  think  of  the  others  as  mere 
imitators  and  satellites  of  his.  They  had  been  working  or  training 
along  similar  lines  before  they  met  him;  they  gave  up  neither  their 
characteristics  nor  literary  ideals  in  working  with  him;  and  he  him- 
self, likable  and  leading  character  though  he  was,  had  not  at  that 
time  been  recognized,  even  locally,  as  a  great  writer. 

Between  1795,  when  he  was  fired  by  William  Taylor's  translation 
of  BUrger's  "Lenore,"  and  1799,  when  he  published  his  translation 
of  Goethe's  "Goetz  von  Berlichingen,"  Scott  was  temporarily  carried 
away  by  the  popular  German  tide.  He  printed  his  own  translation 
of  ^Xenore"  and  "The  Wild  Himtsman,"  he  wrote  a  dramatic  Ger- 
man adaptation,  "The  House  of  Aspen,"  which  he  somewhat  apolo- 
getically printed  many  years  later;  and  he  also  translated  or  adapted 
in  manuscript  other  poems  and  dramas,  which  his  cannie  Scotch 
sense  kept  him  from  inflicting  upon  a  long-suffering  world.  With  all 
the  enthusiasm  of  youth  he  named  his  cavalry  horse  Lenore  and 
carried  from  the  office  of  a  prominent  Edinburgh  surgeon  a  skull 
and  crossbones  to  adorn  his  own  sanctum.  This  Germanic  spasm, 
though  it  left  permanent  traces  on  his  writings,  appears  to  have 
abated  by  1800.  Goethe's  "Goetz,"  with  all  its  faults,  showed  him  by 
contrast  the  absurdities  of  Goethe's  imitators;  and  the  revulsion  in 
popular  feeling  throughout  Great  Britain  must  have  told  on  a  man 
so  young  as  the  translator  and  so  free  from  literary  conceit.  He 
abandoned  his  temporary  enthusiasm  for  another  that  had  always 
been  coexistent  witii  it,  that  had  begun  earlier  in  his  life  and  was 
destined  to  influence  him  far  more,  an  enthusiasm  for  a  type  of 

[  69  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

literature  in  some  ways  akin  to  the  German,  in  others  wholly 
different,  the  Ballad  poetry  of  the  Scotch  Border. 

Though  the  son  of  an  Edinburgh  lawyer,  Scott  had  dwelt  from 
childhood  on  the  memories  of  the  old  border  chiefs  who  were  his 
ancestors.  At  twenty-one  he  had  visited  the  wildest  regions  of 
Liddesdale,  partly  "to  pick  up  some  of  the  ancient  riding  ballads, 
said  to  be  still  preserved  among  the  descendants  of  the  moss- 
troopers." During  seven  years  after  this  he  made  "raids"  in  Liddes- 
dale, gathering  knowledge  of  life  in  these  unsophisticated  regions 
and  also  materials  that  were  later  used  in  the  "Minstrelsy  of  the 
Scottish  Border."  Although  for  a  long  time  he  would  seem  to  have 
been  impelled  by  a  young  man's  love  of  seeing  life  rather  than  by 
a  definite  aim  of  producing  a  book  or  encouraging  a  literary  move- 
ment, yet  he  was  preparing  for  both.  No  man  could  be  less  like  the 
author  of  "Christabel"  than  he;  but  he  shared  with  that  wayward 
genius  the  power  of  attracting  men.  As  Coleridge  gradually  drew 
together  the  poetical  followers  of  Rousseau  and  metaphysics,  one 
by  one,  so  Scott  gradually  impressed  into  his  service  every  anti- 
quarian in  the  region  until  he  had  formed  a  little  cohort  of  men  who 
transmuted  antiquarianism  into  poetry.  The  first  of  these  was  Dr. 
Elliot  of  Cleughhead,  whom  Scott  met  in  1792,  and  who  before  that 
event  had  gathered  a  large  MSS.  collection  of  border  ballads.  In- 
spired by  his  young  friend,  for  whom  he  "would  have  gane  through 
fire  and  water,"  Dr.  Elliot  now  mined  with  redoubled  vigor  the  ballad 
veins  of  the  mountain  region.  Incidentally,  as  an  influence  on  Scott's 
mood,  though  not  a  source  for  the  "Minstrelsy,"  we  should  mention 
that  one  of  his  most  intimate  friends  both  now  and  after  was  Thomas 
Thompson,  called  by  Lockhart,  "the  first  legal  antiquary  of  our 
time  in  Scotland."  In  1798  "Monk"  Lewis  made  a  journey  to  Edin- 
burgh; and,  having  already  heard  that  Scott  had  a  few  German 
translations,  and  having  corresponded  with  him  about  them,  now 
made  his  acquaintance.  Lewis  was  a  pseudo-poet  and  pseudo- 
scholar;  but  he  was  then  collecting  unearthly  ballads  for  the  "hob- 
goblin repast"  of  his  "Tales  of  Wonder,"  and  so  waked  a  responsive 
chord  at  once  in  the  German  and  the  ballad  chamber  of  his  friend's 
heart.  He  included  several  of  Scott's  early  diablerie  poems  in  his 

[  70  ] 


THE  SCOTCH  GROUP 

unfortunate  "Tales  of  Wonder"  (1801),  used  his  influence  with  the 
publisher  Bell  to  get  "Goetz"  printed,  and  introduced  Scott  to  Lon- 
don society  when  the  latter  ran  down  there  manuscript  hunting  in 
the  British  Museum  in  1799.  Lewis,  as  a  famous  writer,  was  listened 
to  with  extreme  deference  by  his  greater  but  more  modest  com- 
panion, gave  Scott  lessons  in  metre,  fanned  his  youthful  love  for  the 
terrible,  and  in  various  ways,  mostly  unfortunate,  became  a  passing 
part  of  the  northern  literary  eddy. 

It  was  not,  however,  until  1800  that  there  really  existed  a  poetico- 
antiquarian  group.  Richard  Heber,  brother  of  the  future  poet, 
happened  to  spend  that  winter  in  Edinburgh;  and,  being  a  learned 
man  with  a  profound  knowledge  of  medieval  literature,  soon  became 
a  welcome  fellow  worker  with  the  as  yet  unrecognized  "wizard  of 
the  north."  In  an  obscure  bookshop  Heber  found  an  uncouthly 
dressed  and  phenomenally  well-read  young  man  named  John  Leyden, 
whom  he  introduced  to  Scott.  It  was  the  junction  of  two  streams; 
and  Leyden's,  though  the  lesser,  was  by  no  means  a  mere  tributary. 
Reared  in  the  wildest  recesses  of  Roxburghshire,  gifted  with  a  most 
phenomenal  power  of  acquiring  knowledge,  he  was  at  once  a  wild 
borderer  and  a  great  scholar.  While  Scott  had  been  publishing  Ger- 
man adaptations,  he  had,  for  three  or  four  years  past,  been  giving 
the  public  translations  from  the  Greek,  Latin,  and  northern  tongues, 
printed  in  The  Edinburgh  Magazine.  Like  Scott,  he  was  already  an 
enthusiastic  collector  of  border  ballads,  and  possessed  a  first-hand 
knowledge  of  them  far  exceeding  that  of  the  Selkirk  sheriff  or  any 
one  else.  Though  the  "Minstrelsy"  had  already  been  planned,  and 
would  have  come  out  had  Leyden  never  entered  the  arena,  it  might 
but  for  him  have  been  a  much  smaller  and  far  less  epoch-making 
work.  Ballantyne,  who  was  to  print  it,  told  Leyden  in  1800  that  a 
single  moderately  sized  volume  ought  to  hold  the  materials;  whereat 
his  companion  answered  with  some  heat:  "I  have  more  than  that 
in  my  head  myself:  we  shall  turn  out  three  or  four  such  volumes  at 
least."  The  "Minstrelsy"  proper  eventually  consisted  of  three  vol- 
umes, with  "Sir  Tristrem"  edited  in  a  fourth;  apparently  the  work 
was  the  realization  of  Leyden's  conception  well-nigh  as  much  as  of 
his  friend's.  Leyden  walked  over  forty  miles  and  back  to  find  an 

[  71  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

old  person  who  knew  the  last  remainder  of  a  ballad  fragment;  and 
much  of  the  material  in  the  essays  of  the  "Minstrelsy,"  even  when 
worded  by  Scott,  must  have  been  furnished  by  him.  In  spite  of  his 
eccentricities,  the  two  men  were  devoted  friends,  ceasing  to  be 
frequent  companions  only  when  Leyden  in  1803  sailed  to  India.  In 
the  year  of  his  departure  he  wrote: 

Oh  Scott!  with  whom,  in  youth's  serenest  prime, 
I  wove  with  careless  hand  the  fairy  rhyme. 
Bade  chivalry's  barbaric  pomp  return, 
And  heroes  wake  from  every  mouldering  urn! 

and  he  recalls  regretfully 

The  wild-wood  walks  by  Esk's  romantic  shore. 

The  circled  hearth,  which  ne'er  was  wont  to  fail 

In  cheerful  joke,  or  legendary  tale, 

Thy  mind,  whose  fearless  frankness  nought  could  move. 

Thy  friendship,  like  an  elder  brother's  love. 

The  older  and  greater  poet  gave  a  corresponding  tribute  in  "The 
Lord  of  the  Isles"  to  his  friend's  "bright  and  brief  career." 

In  the  same  year  that  Scott  met  Leyden,  he  also  made  the 
acquaintance  of  William  Laidlaw,  who  became  his  lifelong  friend 
and  at  once  a  subordinate  and  an  equal.  Laidlaw  is  a  minor  poet, 
briefly  mentioned  in  some  collections,  and  deserves  only  a  very  small 
niche  in  the  circle.  He  was,  however,  of  some  assistance  in  preparing 
"The  Minstrelsy."  He  became  the  means,  also,  of  introducing  his 
new  friend  in  1801  to  another  of  many  years'  standing,  a  man  far 
below  Scott  in  early  advantages  and  ultimate  achievement,  but  in 
natural  genius  not  always  his  inferior,  the  shepherd  poet,  James 
Hogg.  Hogg  had  been  brought  up  in  the  midst  of  poverty,  ignorance, 
and  superstition,  which  inevitably  stunted  his  great  natural  powers, 
but  which  none  the  less  peculiarly  fitted  him  to  understand  the 
attitude  of  mind  that  in  bygone  ages  had  produced  folk  poetry.  His 
mother,  from  whom  he  apparently  derived  his  genius,  had  a  remark- 
able memory  filled  with  ballads  handed  down  by  oral  tradition;  and, 
although  a  transitory  discipleship  of  Burns  first  made  him  write 
verse,  he  became  eventually  the  poet  of  the  folk  ballads  that  had 

[  72  ] 


THE  SCOTCH  GROUP 

lulled  his  infancy.  For  years  before  1800  he  and  William  Laidlaw, 
on  whose  father's  farm  he  was  a  hired  laborer,  had  indulged  in 
poetical  bouts  and  competitions  in  the  fields,  like  the  pastoral  shep- 
herds of  Vergil.  Scott,  visiting  the  Hoggs  in  their  humble  cottage, 
heard  old  ballads  and  very  frank  criticism  from  both  mother  and 
son,  while  preparing  the  third  volume  of  his  ^'Minstrelsy."  Mean- 
while the  two  earlier  volumes  of  that  work  had  kindled  Hogg  into 
a  ballad  poet.  "I  was  not  satisfied  with  many  of  the  imitations  of 
the  ancients.  I  immediately  chose  a  number  of  traditional  facts,  and 
set  about  imitating  the  different  manners  of  the  ancients  myself." 
Several  of  these  ballads,  "The  Death  of  Douglas,"  "Sir  David 
Graeme"  (which  was  an  avowed  imitation  of  "The  Twa  Corbies" 
in  "The  Minstrelsy"),  and  "Lord  Derwent,"  are  full  of  genuine 
poetry  and  Border  atmosphere. 

The  lady  to  her  window  hied. 

That  opened  owr  the  banks  o'  Tyne; 

or 

Red  blazed  the  beacon  on  Pownell; 

On  Skiddaw  there  were  three; 
The  warder's  horn,  on  muir  and  fell. 

Was  heard  continually. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  these  poems,  though  called  out  by 
Scott's  "Minstrelsy,"  were  not  written  in  imitation  but  as  a  reaction 
from  it  or  correction  for  it.  Even  where  they  are  not  great  they  are 
genuine,  the  product  of  the  Border  soil.  "His  poetic  faculty  and 
imaginative  creations,"  in  the  judgment  of  Professor  Veitch,  "were 
almost  as  thoroughly  the  growth  of  the  district  and  circumstances 
in  which  he  was  born  and  bred,  as  the  birk  by  the  burn  or 
the  bracken  in  the  glen." 

In  1800  and  1801  Scott  drew  into  the  vortex  of  his  labors  two 
English  antiquaries,  whose  characters  had  about  as  much  similarity 
as  light  and  darkness.  Joseph  Ritson  was  a  half  insane  scholar  whom 
the  bland  sheriff  of  Selkirkshire  brought  for  a  moment  socially  into 
his  group,  only  to  be  expelled  by  his  own  impossible  mannerisms 
and  the  teasing  of  Leyden.  Ritson,  who  was,  with  all  his  faults,  a 

[  73  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

learned,  and  for  his  day,  an  unusually  accurate  scholar,  proved  ei, 
valuable  aid  to  Scott  though  a  very  unwelcome  guest  to  his  wife. 
George  Ellis  was  a  London  antiquary  and  charming  man  of  the 
world,  his  connection  with  Scott,  like  that  of  Lamb  with  the  Bristol 
authors,  being  mainly  epistolary  and  yet  exceedingly  cordial.  Their 
friendship  continued  unbroken  until  the  death  of  Ellis  in  1815;  and 
their  letters  after  1801  are  loaded  with  antiquarian  detail.  Leyden, 
when  he  came  to  London  in  1803  on  his  way  to  India,  was  intro- 
duced by  letter  to  Ellis,  received  much  kindness  at  his  hands,  and 
left  a  record  of  it  in  a  manuscript  poem  quoted  by  Lockhart  praising 
"That  kind  squeyere  Ellis'^  and  ridiculing  "that  dwarf"  Ritson. 

A  somewhat  later  addition  to  the  group  was  Robert  Jamieson,  a 
poor  young  school  teacher  and  also  a  minor  poet  and  enthusiastic 
ballad  collector.  Being  at  work  on  a  ballad  collection  of  his  own,  he 
was  a  friend  and  fellow  spirit,  but  not  an  active  assistant  in  "The 
Minstrelsy."  Scott  in  fact  said:  "I  therefore,  as  far  as  the  nature  of 
my  work  permitted,  sedulously  avoided  anticipating  any  of  his 
materials."  Various  other  antiquaries  and  authors  of  occasional 
stanzas  had  some  social  or  literary  connection;  but  though  they 
showed  the  national  spirit,  they  have  no  individual  significance. 
Scott,  Leyden,  Hogg,  Laidlaw,  and  Jamieson  are  all  included  in 
J.  G.  Wilson's  "Poets  and  Poetry  of  Scotland,"  and  may  be  con- 
sidered as  genuine  children  of  the  Muses.  They  formed  to  spme 
degree  a  social  group,  which  was  the  nucleus  of  a  more  far-reaching 
literary  eddy  just  at  the  turn  of  the  century. 

Every  one  of  these  men,  even  the  uneducated  Hogg,  was  in  some 
way  an  antiquarian  and  scholar,  a  gatherer  and  preserver  of  the 
literature  of  the  past.  This  trait  was  not  inspired  by  one  man  in  all 
the  others;  it  appeared  in  every  one  before  he  joined  the  group, 
though  the  influence  and  example  of  Scott  naturally  increased  it. 
They  stood  as  a  body  for  the  poetry  of  a  traditional  past,  not  a 
medieval  Utopia,  like  that  of  "Christabel"  and  "The  Eve  of  St. 
Agnes,"  but  a  national  life  that  had  been.  From  the  depths  of  their 
hearts  they  would  have  cried  about  the  wild  life  of  the  border 
ballads  what  their  fellow  countryman  Carlyle  said  about  the  twelfth- 
century  monastery:  "It  was  a  reality  and  is  none."  Nowhere  else 

[  74  ] 


THE  SCOTCH  GROUP 

in  Great  Britain  at  that  time  was  there  so  close  a  union  of  scholarly- 
accuracy  and  wild  romance,  of  history  and  poetry.  It  was  this  feel- 
ing that  related  them  so  closely  to  Ellis,  who  as  a  Londoner  and  the 
clever  satirist  of  The  Anti- Jacobin,  was  in  many  ways  so  far  apart 
from  them.  His  ^'Early  English  Metrical  Romances"  and  Scott's 
"Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel"  both  appeared  in  1805  after  four  years 
of  mutual  correspondence.  Ellis's  book  contained  abstracts  in  prose 
of  many  old  romances  from  the  King  Arthur  and  Charlemagne 
cycles:  romances  of  Merlin,  Guy  of  Warwick,  Sir  Bevis  of  Hamp- 
toun,  and  others,  and,  like  "The  Minstrelsy,"  gave  introductory 
historical  essays.  Inasmuch  as  "The  Minstrelsy"  was  the  direct 
child  of  Percy's  "Reliques,"  J.  O.  Halliwell  was  asserting  the  kin- 
ship of  Scott  and  the  author  of  the  "Metrical  Romances"  when  he 
said:  "EHis,  in  fact,  did  for  ancient  romance  what  Percy  had  pre- 
viously accomplished  for  early  poetry."  Scott  with  fraternal  enthu- 
siasm declared  that  Ellis  "transferred  all  the  playful  fascinations 
of  a  humor,  as  delightful  as  it  was  uncommon,  into  the  forgotten 
poetry  of  the  ancient  minstrels,  and  gave  life  and  popularity  to 
compositions  which  had  till  then  been  buried  in  the  closet  of  the 
antiquary." 

The  next  year  Jamieson  published  a  similar  work,  his  "Popular 
Ballads  and  Songs,  from  Tradition,  Manuscript,  and  scarce  editions, 
with  Translations  of  Similar  Pieces  from  the  Ancient  Danish  Lan- 
guage and  a  few  Originals  by  the  Editor."  Though  now  hardly 
twenty-seven  he  had  been  at  work  on  it  for  years.  In  1800  he  had 
first  met  Scott,  learned  of  the  projected  "Minstrelsy,"  and  found 
that  that  hitherto  unsuspected  work  and  his  own  "were  nearly  in  an 
equal  state  of  forwardness."  His  new  friend  later  especially  praised 
his  discovery  of  the  kinship  between  Scottish  and  Scandinavian 
legends,  "a  circumstance  which  no  antiquary  had  hitherto  so  much 
as  suspected."  Jamieson  had  a  scholarly  love  for  accuracy.  His 
"True  Thomas  and  the  Queen  of  Elfland"  is  in  archaic  spelling  and 
diction,  in  contrast  to  the  same  story  adapted  in  Scott's  "Thomas 
the  Rhymer."  And  it  was  his  ambition  to  give  his  Danish  folk  poetry 
"as  nearly  as  possible  in  the  exact  state  in  which  it  grew  amid  the 
rocks  of  Norway,  and  in  the  valleys  of  Jutland." 

[  75  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

More  important  than  either  of  these  works  was  "The  Minstrelsy 
of  the  Scottish  Border/'  for  which  the  credit  must  mainly  go  to 
Scott,  but  in  which  Leyden  at  least  should  be  considered  an  exten- 
sive collaborator.  Not  counting  the  avowed  imitations  of  Scott  and 
his  friends,  it  contained  between  seventy  and  eighty  ballads,  most 
of  which  were  genuine  folk  poetry,  and  forty-three  of  which  had 
never  before  been  printed.  Scott  divided  these  into  two  classes,  his- 
torical and  romantic;  a  distinction  generally  adhered  to  by  northern 
ballad  scholars,  and  enunciated  a  third  of  a  century  later  by  the 
Scotch  poet  Motherwell.  "The  Historical  Ballad  relates  events, 
which  we  either  know  actually  to  have  taken  place,  or  which,  at 
least,  making  due  allowance  for  the  exaggerations  of  poetical  tradi- 
tion, we  may  readily  conceive  to  have  had  some  foundation  in  his- 
tory." The  romantic  ballads  are  "intended  to  comprehend  such 
legends  as  are  current  upon  the  border,  relating  to  fictitious  and 
marvellous  adventures."  The  latter  class,  he  tells  us,  "are  much  more 
extensively  known  among  the  peasantry  of  Scotland  than  the 
[historical]  border  raid  ballads,  the  fame  of  which  is  in  general 
confined  to  the  mountains  where  they  were  originally  composed." 
The  romantic  ballads  connect  on  all  sides  with  the  general  problems 
of  folk  poetry,  with  Percy's  "Reliques,"  with  similar  poems  in  Den- 
mark and  other  countries.  They  remind  us  that  "The  Minstrelsy" 
was  only  one  great  step  in  literary  evolution  moving  on  throughout 
the  eighteenth  and  early  nineteenth  centuries;  that  four  years  after 
the  publishing  of  Scott's  collection  the  yet  more  momentous  one  of 
Von  Arnim,  "Des  Knaben  Wunderhorn"  appeared  in  Germany,  and 
that  eight  years  after  that  for  far-away  Serbia  oral  poetry  current 
through  centuries  was  first  given  out  in  print.  The  "historical  bal- 
lads," though  some  of  them  had  appeared  in  Percy  and  elsewhere, 
are  much  more  local,  with  the  smack  of  the  soil  in  them  at  every 
turn.  They  are  so  numerous  in  "The  Minstrelsy"  and  so  rare  in 
"The  Reliques"  that  the  general  atmosphere  of  the  two  collections 
is  markedly  unlike,  that  of  the  later  work  far  more  adventurous, 
martial,  and  touched  with  daredevil  humor.  There  is  less  pathos 
than  in  Percy,  and  far  less  of  sentimentality,  but  instead  border 

[76] 


THE  SCOTCH  GROUP 

fighting,  lifting  of  cattle,  rescuing  of  imprisoned  freebooters,  whole- 
sale robbery,  and  yet  a  rough  but  inflexible  code  of  honor. 

For  IVe  luved  naething  in  my  life, 
I  weel  dare  say  it,  but  honesty, 

declares  the  raider  Johnie  Armstrong.  The  legally  trained  editor  of 
"The  Minstrelsy,"  no  doubt,  smiled  in  reading  how  the  ancient 
Sir  Walter  Scott  was  rebuked  by  his  king  for  condemning  a  thief: 

For,  had  everye  honeste  man  his  awin  kye, 
A  right  pure*  clan  thy  name  wad  be. 

A  contemporary  said  that  "The  Minstrelsy"  contained  the  material 
for  a  hundred  romances;  and  it  is  easy  to  find  in  "Kempion"  and 
"Tamlane"  the  Alice  Brand  story  of  "The  Lady  of  the  Lake,"  in 
"The  Battle  of  Loudonhill"  and  "The  Battle  of  Bothwellbridge" 
hints  for  "Old  Mortality,"  in  "The  Laird  of  Laminton"  ("Katherine 
Janfarie")  the  germ  of  "Lochinvar,"  and  in  "The  Gay  Goss  Hawk" 
the  story  of  James  Hogg's  "Mary  Scott."  As  for  the  debt  of  later 
poems  in  spirit  and  language,  it  can  hardly  be  overemphasized. 

The  modern  imitations  include  verse  by  several  negligible  figures, 
among  them  the  uninspiring  names  of  Matt  Lewis  and  Anna  Sew- 
ard; but  we  need  consider  only  the  five  poems  by  Leyden  and  the 
seven  by  Scott.  Both  authors  were  by  blood  and  tradition  the  chil- 
dren of  the  wild  Border  spirit.  Leyden  tells  us  that  when  the  plaintive 
strain  of  Flodden 

In  early  youth  rose  soft  and  sweet. 
My  life-blood,  through  each  throbbing  vein 

With  wild  tumultuous  passion  beat. 
And  oft,  in  fancied  might,  I  trode 

The  spear-strewn  path  to  Fame's  abode.  .  .  . 
Rude  border  chiefs,  of  mighty  name 

And  iron  soul,  who  sternly  tore 
The  blossoms  from  the  tree  of  fame. 

And  purpled  deep  their  tints  with  gore, 
Rush  from  brown  ruins  scarred  with  age. 
That  frown  o'er  haunted  Hermitage. 


♦poor 


[  77] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

Scott  had  the  self-same  mood: 

And  still  I  thought  that  shattered  tower 

The  mightiest  work  of  human  power, 

And  marvelled  as  the  aged  hind 

With  some  strange  tale  bewitched  my  mind 

Of  forayers,  who  with  headlong  force 

Down  from  that  strength  had  spurred  their  horse, 

Their  southern  rapine  to  renew 

Far  in  the  distant  Cheviots  blue, 

And,  home  returning,  filled  the  hall 

With  revel,  wassail-rout,  and  brawl. 

Methought  that  still  with  trump  and  clang 

The  gateway's  broken  arches  rang; 

Methought  grim  features,  seamed  with  scars, 

Glared  through  the  window's  rusty  bars. 

How  could  we  expect  Coleridge,  Lamb,  and  Southey,  reared  in 
localities  where  there  had  been  neither  war  nor  garrisoned  fortress 
for  five  hundred  years,  to  write  like  these  men,  or  even  like  the 
milder  Hogg,  brought  up  from  infancy  on  tales  of  Ettrick  Forest, 
"that  scene  of  many  a  bloody  conflict"?  Morton  says  that  the  long 
dissertation  on  fairies  in  the  second  volume  of  "The  Minstrelsy" 
was  almost  entirely  the  work  of  Ley  den;  and  perhaps  it  was  because 
his  head  was  so  full  of  this  that  his  ballad  imitations  had  even  more 
of  the  supernatural  than  Scott's.  His  Lord  Soulis  and  Keeldar  are 
chiefs  of  the  border,  but  also  deal  in  magic  of  the  wildest  type. 
Instead  of 

the  good  steel  sperthe. 
Full  ten  pound  weight  and  more 

of  "The  Eve  of  St.  John,"  we  learn  of  Soulis 

No  danger  he  fears,  for  a  charm'd  sword  he  wears; 
Of  adderstone  the  hilt. 

Scott's  warriors  all  wear  mortal  armor,  "shield,  and  jack,  and 
acton";  but  Leyden's  Keeldar  tells  his  wife: 

My  casque  of  sand,  by  a  mermaid's  hand, 
Was  formed  beneath  the  sea. 

[  78  ] 


THE  SCOTCH  GROUP 

Scott^s  poetry,  especially  "Cadyow  Castle"  and  "The  Eve  of  St. 
John,"  is  more  dramatic  and  on  the  whole  better;  yet  one  cannot 
help  feeling  that  Leyden's  belief  in  the  unseen,  like  that  of  Hogg, 
had  been  less  damped  by  contact  with  urban  civilization.  There  is 
an  admirable  faith  and  vigor  in  his  unearthly  narratives,  though  they 
have  neither  Coleridge's  music  nor  Browning's  matter. 

And  many  a  weary  night  went  by, 

As  in  the  lonely  cave  he  lay, 
And  many  a  sun  rolled  through  the  sky. 

And  poured  its  beams  on  Colonsay; 
And  oft,  beneath  the  silver  moon, 

He  heard  afar  the  mermaid  sing, 
And  oft,  to  many  a  melting  tune. 

The  shell-formed  lyres  of  ocean  ring. 

Scott's  own  ballads,  like  the  collected  ones,  divide  into  historical 
and  romantic  (or  supernatural)  ones,  the  former  class  being  repre- 
sented by  the  death  of  Murray  in  "Cadyow  Castle,"  the  latter  by 
the  weird  women  of  "Glenfinlas"  and  the  ghostly  lover  in  "The  Eve 
of  St.  John."  These  two  elements  continue  to  alternate  through 
Scott's  later  poetry,  although  the  "fictitious  and  marvellous  adven- 
tures" consistently  preponderate  over  what  "we  may  readily  con- 
ceive to  have  had  some  foundation  in  history." 

Besides  his  part  in  "The  Minstrelsy,"  Leyden  in  1801  published 
an  edition  of  "The  Complaynt  of  Scotland"  with  a  scholarly  pre- 
Hminary  dissertation,  and  in  1803  his  longest  original  poem,  "Scenes 
of  Infancy."  This  was  begun,  and  its  general  tone  determined,  some 
time  before  his  meeting  with  Scott;  and  it  was  composed  at  intervals 
far  apart.  The  result  is  a  patchwork  of  moods.  At  times  there  is 
pronounced  medieval  romanticism,  at  times  the  mild  eighteenth- 
century  manner  of  Rogers  and  Goldsmith,  whose  couplet  he  uses. 

Here  oft  in  sweetest  sounds  is  heard  the  chime 
Of  bells  unholy  from  the  fairy  clime; 

but  at  other  times  we  hear  less  poetical,  even  if  "holier"  music,  such 
as  this: 

[  79  ]    • 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

Blest  are  the  sons  of  life's  sequestered  vale: 
No  storms  of  fate  their  humble  heads  assail. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  none  of  these  Scotch  writers  had  any 
hostility  to  Pope.  They  had  the  same  reverence  for  him  that  they 
had  for  any  great  poet  on  whom  a  reasonable  amount  of  antique 
dust  had  accumulated.  They  regarded  him  as  a  chivalrous  man  might 
regard  a  woman,  a  bright  phenomenon  to  be  admired  and  enjoyed 
but  not  copied,  because  belonging  to  a  different  world  of  experience. 
Perhaps  also  the  more  neo-classic  passages  were  influenced  by 
Campbell,  whom  Leyden  had  introduced  to  Scott,  and  afterwards 
quarreled  with.  The  poem  is  loaded  with  details  of  the  Border  life 
and  landscape.  From  the  verse  which  Leyden  wrote  later  in  India 
that  Scotch  atmosphere  has  gone,  his  poetry,  in  the  words  of  Shelley, 
taking  on  the  color  of  the  leaves  under  which  he  passed. 

Two  works  of  Scott  which  had  originally  been  planned  as  parts 
of  "The  Minstrelsy"  outgrew  their  intended  vehicle  and  appeared 
in  separate  binding.  These  were  his  edition  of  the  ancient  "Sir 
Tristrem"  and  his  "Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel."  By  a  division  which 
may  appear  arbitrary  but  which  we  believe  defensible,  we  shall 
separate  the  "Lay"  from  the  following  long  romances.  "Marmion" 
and  "Rokeby"  were  written  by  a  man  already  famous,  becoming 
daily  less  and  less  part  of  a  local  circle,  more  and  more  a  citizen  of 
the  great  literary  world,  deriving  steadily  smaller  and  smaller  help 
from  the  companions  whom  he  overshadowed.  The  "Lay"  was 
conceived  by  a  man  still  comparatively  obscure,  and  was  probably 
more  of  a  communal  product  than  the  others,  written  wholly  by  one 
man  but  evolved  in  the  atmosphere  of  a  group.  Scott  had  evidently 
developed  some  mental  dependence  on  Leyden,  for  in  his  verse 
argument  with  Heber  he  laments  that 

Leyden  aids,  alas!  no  more. 
My  cause  with  many-languaged  lore. 

The  most  famous  passage  in  the  "Lay," 

If  thou  wouldst  view  fair  Melrose  aright, 

[  80  ] 


THE  SCOTCH  GROUP 

has  much  likeness  to  one  in  "Scenes  of  Infancy,"  probably  written 
earlier,  and  apparently  "by  the  pale  moonlight": 

Deserted  Melrose!  oft  with  holy  dread 
I  trace  thy  ruins  mouldering  o'er  the  dead; 
While,  as  the  fragments  fall,  wild  fancy  hears 
The  solemn  steps  of  old  departed  years.  .  .  . 
Where  pealing  organs  through  the  pillar'd  fane 
Swell'd  clear  to  heaven  devotion's  sweetest  strain. 
The  bird  of  midnight  hoots*  with  dreary  tone. 
And  sullen  echoes  through  the  cloisters  moan.f  .  .  . 
Ye  mossy  sculptures,  on  the  roof  emboss'd. 
Like  wreathing  icicles  congeal 'd  by  frost! 
Each  branching  window,  and  each  fretted  shrine, 
Which  peasants  still  to  fairy  handsj  assign. 

There  was  probably  no  borrowing  here;  but  there  were  two  similar 
growths  from  a  common  soil  of  thought.  As  an  evidence  of  the  fun- 
damental difference  between  the  authors  of  the  Scotch  and  Bristol 
eddies,  we  should  remember  that  Tintern  Abbey  is  as  beautiful  as 
Melrose,  and  was  visited  by  most  of  the  near-by  poets;  yet  it  called 
out  no  great  verse  from  them.  The  "Lines"  written  near  Tintern 
Abbey  ignore  the  splendid  ruin  to  talk  of  nature  and  psychology. 
Forty  years  later  the  magnificent  remains  of  Furness  Abbey  merely 
reminded  Wordsworth  that 

A  soothing  spirit  follows  in  the  way 
That  Nature  takes,  her  counter-work  pursuing. 

Other  evidences  occur  of  studies  common  to  Leyden  and  Scott. 
The  central  incident  of  Canto  II  in  the  "Lay"  is  foreshadowed  in 
Leyden's  "Lord  Soulis": 

The  black  spae-book  from  his  breast  he  took, 

Impressed  with  many  a  warlock  spell: 
And  the  book  it  was  wrote  by  Michael  Scott, 

Who  held  in  awe  the  fiends  of  hell. 

*Cf.  "Lay,"II,i,  14. 
t  Cf.  "Lay,"  II,  xvi,  3. 
t  Cf .  "Lay,"  II,  xi,  4. 

[81   ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

They  buried  it  deep,  where  his  bones  they  sleep, 

That  mortal  man  might  never  it  see: 
But  Thomas  did  save  it  from  the  grave. 

When  he  returned  from  Faerie. 

The  third,  fourth,  and  fifth  cantos  of  the  "Lay"  are  in  the  spirit  of 
the  "historical"  ballads.  There  is  no  supernatural  element  but  that 
of  the  goblin  page,  which  is  minor  and  handled  in  a  very  matter- 
of-fact  mood.  The  theme  is  the  rough  martial  life  of  the  border, 
substantially  as  it  actually  occurred,  the  poetry  of  adventurous 
realism.  The  first  and  second  cantos,  and  most  of  the  sixth,  unite 
the  spirit  of  the  "romantic"  or  supernatural  ballad  with  influences 
from  more  learned  poets  of  England.  The  awful  and  unearthly  over- 
weighs  the  tangible.  The  metre  varies  and  grows  consciously  lit- 
erary. The  influence  of  "Christabel,"  which  the  author  had  heard 
recited,  is  obvious  in  the  first  canto ;  the  second  adds  what  was  best 
in  the  Gothic  tale  of  terror,  with  the  genuine  thrill  that  Ann  Rad- 
cliffe  had  felt  ten  years  before  in  Furness  Abbey,  and  the  imagina- 
tive medievalism  of  Tom  Warton.  There  is  some  likeness  between 
the  opening  of  King  Arthur's  grave  in  the  latter's  poem  and  the 
opening  of  Michael  Scott's. 

There  shall  thine  eye,  with  wild  amaze. 
On  his  gigantic  stature  gaze; 
There  shalt  thou  find  the  monarch  laid. 
All  in  warrior  weeds  arrayed; 
Wearing  in  death  his  helmet  crown, 
And  weapons  huge  of  old  renown. 

Miss  Mitford  declared  "The  Grave  of  King  Arthur"  "an  ode  which 
I  should,  from  internal  evidence,  have  pronounced  at  once  to  have 
been  written  by  Walter  Scott";  and  she  found  in  it  "the  very 
ideas  and  imagery  of  the  finest  part  of  The  Lay,'  Deloraine's  visit 
to  Melrose."  The  songs  and  final  scene  of  penitent  pilgrims  in 
Canto  VI  have  little  connection  with  the  Border;  but  deal  chiefly 
with  magic,  with  Scandinavian  legend,  with  medieval  ritual,  and 
the  revived  "Dies  Irae."  More  good  poetry  occurs  in  the  "Lay"  than 
in  any  of  Scott's  other  narratives;  but  it  is  a  mosaic  of  styles  rather 

[  82  ] 


THE  SCOTCH  GROUP 

than  a  harmonious  work  of  art,  the  product  of  a  mind  that  had  not 
yet  oriented  itself  toward  the  literary  currents  around  it. 

There  is  a  common  spirit  in  all  these  Scotch  poets,  great  or  little. 
It  links  the  world-renowned  Sir  Walter  with  scores  of  his  minor 
countrymen  of  whom  the  world  hardly  knew.  It  persists  in  the  later 
romances  and  the  Waverley  novels.  It  appears  in  other  Scotch 
writers  of  the  period,  Joanna  Baillie,  and  later  Allan  Cunningham 
and  William  Motherwell.  But  more  than  that  it  is  a  temper  which 
reaches  backward  and  forward  through  the  centuries  among  the 
greater  number  of  Scotch  writers.  It  may  be  roughly  defined  as  the 
romance  of  real  adventure,  in  contrast  with  the  unromantic,  unad- 
venturous  realism  of  Crabbe  or  the  visionary,  unworldly  roman- 
ticism of  Coleridge  and  Blake.  Among  the  wild  heights  and  eventful 
lives  of  the  Scotch,  romanticism  and  realism  became  identified  as 
they  could  not  among  tamer  landscapes  and  a  more  sedentary 
people.  In  one  sense  of  the  word  Scotch  literature  has  been  romantic 
down  through  the  centuries;  but  its  romanticism  was  that  of  wild 
incident  and  adventure,  not  of 

The  light  that  never  was  on  sea  or  land. 

According  to  Professor  Veitch,  the  interest  of  the  ancient  Scottish 
poem  "Sir  Tristrem"  "lies  entirely  in  story  and  incident,  and  the 
variations  that  may  be  played  on  the  chord  of  illicit  and  adventurous 
love."  "Action  intensely  felt  and  vividly  portrayed,  the  strong  sense 
of  physical  vigor  and  manliness  as  the  ground  and  title  of  honorable 
place  and  property  in  the  world,"  are  among  the  chief  elements  in 
the  ancient  romances  that  during  the  fourteenth  and  early  fifteenth 
centuries  represented  the  literature  of  Scotland.  With  the  exception 
of  illicit  love,  these  are  precisely  the  qualities  which  mark  the 
poetry  and  prose  of  Scott,  and  the  verse  of  his  minor  friends.  They 
are  also  the  salient  characteristics  of  the  Scotch  novelist  Robert 
Stevenson  nearly  a  century  later.  They  can  be  traced  in  the  pictured 
page  of  his  countryman  Carlyle,  at  once  the  arch-enemy  of  pseudo- 
romance  and  the  most  romantic  of  historians.  Much  in  these 
northern  poets  that  has  been  ascribed  to  the  "romantic  movement" 
is  a  racial  trait,  reaching  forward  and  backward  through  centuries, 

[  83  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

and  utterly  unlike  the  poetry  of  Coleridge,  Keats,  Wordsworth, 
Blake,  and  even  of  Scott's  avowed  imitators  below  the  Tweed. 
There  was,  perhaps,  a  new  interest  in  landscape  beauty  which  ran 
across  the  ancestral  channel,  merely  coloring  it  without  changing 
its  course;  but  even  this  had  made  Thomson  a  poet  in  the  height 
of  the  Augustan  age. 

There  is  another  consideration,  at  once  racial  and  geographical, 
in  connection  with  this  revival  of  ballad  poetry.  It  is  generally 
agreed  among  scholars  that  northern  England  and  southern  Scot- 
land received  a  considerable  infusion  of  Scandinavian  blood  from 
their  Danish  invaders.  The  literature  of  Denmark  is  richer  in  folk 
poetry  than  any  other  in  Europe;  and  it  was  in  this  Border  region 
marked  by  the  infusion  of  Danish  blood  that  most  of  the  English 
and  Scotch  ballads  were  found.  Moreover,  as  Jamieson  first  pointed 
out,  there  are  many  marked  parallels  between  these  ballads  and 
those  of  Denmark.  Both  'The  Minstrelsy  of  the  Scottish  Border" 
and  the  original  poems  of  the  period  represent  a  poetic  tradition 
partly  derived  from  Danish  seed  and  developed  by  a  people  whose 
blood  was  probably  part  Danish  and  part  Saxon.  The  result  was  a 
literature  distinctly  different  from  that  of  either  the  pure  Anglo- 
Saxon  or  the  Celt.  A  comparison  of  "Christabel"  and  "The  Irish 
Melodies"  with  "The  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel"  shows  a  common 
spirit  of  the  age  striking  across  different  racial,  as  well  as  personal, 
tendencies,  with  resulting  likenesses  but  unlikenesses  greater  still. 

"This   Scandinavian  population,"   says   Professor  Veitch,   "has 

certainly  left  its  impress  on  the  unwritten  compositions  of  the  north 
of  England  and  the  Lowlands  of  Scotland,  and  through  these  now 
on  the  literature  of  our  time.  The  Saxon  had  neither,  as  has  been 
well  said,  'the  pathos  which  inspires  the  bardic  songs  of  the  van- 
quished Cymri,  the  exulting  imagination  which  reigns  in  the  sagas 
of  the  north,  nor  the  dramatic  life  which  animates  everywhere  the 
legendary  tales  that  light  up  the  dim  beginnings  of  a  people's  his- 
tory.' The  Scandinavian  genius,  on  the  other  hand,  was  essentially 
bardic.  And  it  sung  of  action,  of  deeds  of  daring,  and  of  battle.  That 
intense  ballad  spirit,  which  loved  and  celebrated  personal  deeds, 
to  the  exclusion  nearly  of  all  else,  through  the  middle  period  of 

[84] 


THE  SCOTCH  GROUP 

Scottish  history,  and  which  was  preeminently  developed  in  the 
north  of  England,  the  Scandinavian  area  of  settlement,  and  in  the 
Lowlands  of  Scotland,  seems  to  have  been  an  outcome  mainly  of 
the  Danish  and  Norwegian  blood.  The  frame  of  the  old  ballad  even, 
as  well  as  its  animating  soul,  was  a  legacy  of  the  ardour,  the  life, 
and  the  idiosyncrasy  of  the  Northmen  who  left  their  descendants 
in  our  glens.  And  several  of  the  refrains  which  have  come  down  to 
us  through  the  years,  and  from  what  we  suppose  are  our  Scottish 
ancestors,  are  really  runes  that  were  chanted  long  ago  by  the  bards 
of  the  sea-lords  from  Scandinavia,  when  they  sung  of  loyalty  to 
hero  and  successful  chief." 

It  was  natural  that  the  new  revival  of  Scotch  literature  should 
originate  near  the  Border.  Historically,  says  Professor  Veitch,  the 
Tweed  has  been  the  heart  of  the  Lowlands,  ''so  far  at  least  as  strong 
bold  action,  the  gradual  growth  of  history,  tradition,  legend,  the 
continuous  flow  of  song,  ballad,  and  music,  wholly  native,  have 
moved  the  feelings  and  moulded  the  imagination,  not  only  of  the 
people  of  the  district,  but  of  the  whole  land  of  Scotland."  They 
moved  the  feelings  and  molded  the  imagination  of  people  other  than 
the  Scotch  and  utterly  dissimilar  to  them.  "I  have  been  indebted  to 
the  North  for  more  than  I  shall  ever  be  able  to  acknowledge,"  wrote 
Wordsworth  to  Allan  Cunningham.  "Thomson,  Mickle,  Armstrong, 
Leyden,  yourself,  Irving  (a  poet  in  spirit),  and  I  may  add  Sir  Walter 
Scott  were  all  Borderers." 

Jane  Porter,  the  author  of  "Scottish  Chiefs,"  has  given  us  a 
picture  of  intellectual  life  near  the  Tweed  just  before  Leyden  and 
Scott  began  writing.  "Born  on  the  border  lands  of  Scotland,  my 
mother,  in  an  early  widowhood,  took  her  children  thither,  then 
almost  infants:  .  .  .  But  in  Scotland,  it  is  not  the  'pastors  and 
masters'  only  who  educate  the  people;  there  is  a  spirit  of  wholesome 
knowledge  in  the  country,  pervading  all  ranks,  which  passes  from 
one  to  the  other  like  the  atmosphere  they  breathe;  and  I  may  truly 
say,  that  I  was  hardly  six  years  of  age  when  I  first  heard  the  names 
of  William  Wallace  and  Robert  Bruce: — not  from  gentlemen  and 
ladies,  readers  of  history;  but  from  the  maids  in  the  nursery,  and 
the  serving-man  in  the  kitchen:  the  one  had  their  songs  of  'Wallace 

[  85  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

wight!*  to  lull  my  baby  sister  to  sleep;  and  the  other  his  tales  of 
^Bannockburn/  and  ^Cambus-Kenneth/  to  entertain  my  young 
brother."  Not  only  the  ballads  but  the  later  narrative  poems  of  Scott 
were  the  voice  of  a  people. 

The  various  memorials  of  Wordsworth's  tours  in  Scotland  reveal 
more  sympathy  with  romantic  medievalism  than  is  common  in  his 
poetry.  It  has  often  been  remarked  that  the  best  wording  of  that 
romantic  spirit  which  our  language  preserves  is  in  his  four  lines,  by 
no  means  characteristic  of  his  general  attitude: 

Will  no  one  tell  me  what  she  sings? 

Perhaps  the  plaintive  numbers  flow 
For  old,  unhappy,  far-off  things, 

And  battles  long  ago. 

It  has  not  been  noticed  that  these  lines  were  written  in  Scotland  amid 
the  atmosphere  of  poetical  antiquarianism  general  among  her  people. 

The  racial  qualities  of  the  Scotch  group  appear  in  the  writings 
of  fellow  countrymen  who  were  not  personally  in  touch  with  them. 
The  future  novelist  John  Gait,  at  that  time  unacquainted  with  either 
Scott  or  his  friends,  declares  that  "long  before  the  appearance  of 
The  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel,'  I,  then  very  young,  in  sending  some 
trifle  to  the  Scot's  Magazine,  mentioned  my  design  of  executing  a 
series  of  historical  ballads  and  dramas  from  Scottish  history." 

A  curious  deflection  of  the  general  spirit  is  found  in  the  dramas 
of  Joanna  Baillie,  most  of  which  were  published  between  1798  and 
1804,  while  "The  Minstrelsy"  and  "The  Lay"  were  rounding  into 
shape.  Miss  Baillie  at  this  time  was  not  an  acquaintance  of  Scott, 
though  she  later  became  his  friend.  Living  the  greater  part  of  her 
life  in  London  and  doing  all  her  literary  work  there,  she  remained 
firmly  Scotch  to  the  last,  and  never  lost  her  northern  accent.  "Very 
much  pleased  we  were  with  her,"  said  Southey,  "as  good-natured, 
unaffected,  and  sensible  a  woman  as  I  have  ever  seen."  Like  many 
a  Scotch  writer,  she  attempted  to  combine  romantic  incident  and 
love  of  antiquity  with  a  "cannie"  regard  for  the  realities  of  life; 
but  in  her  case  the  result  was  unfortunate.  Her  plays  are  as  medieval 
in  date  as  the  Waverley  novels.  "Constantine  Paleologus"  is  in 

[86] 


THE  SCOTCH  GROUP 

ancient  Constantinople,  "Basil"  in  sixteenth-century  Italy,  "Eth- 
wald"  among  the  Anglo-Saxons,  "Orra"  in  fourteenth-century  Ger- 
many, "The  Dream"  in  fourteenth-century  Switzerland,  "The 
Martyr"  in  ancient  Rome,  "The  Family  Legend"  in  fifteenth- 
century  Scotland.  The  stage  directions  include  Gothic  chambers, 
monasteries,  and  graveyards.  In  two  plays  flights  occur  through 
secret  passageways;  and  a  number  of  seemingly  supernatural  events 
are  explained  away  on  natural  grounds  according  to  Mrs.  Rad- 
cliffe's  excellent  recipe.  Osterloo's  guilt  is  hinted  to  a  monk  in  a 
vision,  but  the  monk  before  dreaming  had  received  information  on 
the  subject  from  a  deathbed  confession.  Ethwald,  like  Macbeth,  is 
shown  by  the  Mystic  Sisters  a  vision  of  himself  as  a  crowned  yet 
unhappy  king;  but  this  had  been  arranged  by  a  noble  to  check 
Ethwald's  ambition.  Orra  in  the  haunted  castle  hears  the  ghostly 
sound  of  the  wild  hunt  approaching  at  midnight;  but  it  is  a  device 
of  the  robbers  who  live  there  to  keep  prying  intruders  away.  "The 
Family  Legend"  handles  a  wild  Scotch  tale  of  crime  and  revenge, 
told  again  in  Campbell's  "Glenara."  All  this  sounds  romantic  and 
medieval  and  Gothic  enough;  yet  the  general  effect  is  exactly  the 
opposite,  moral,  dignified,  and  dull,  so  different  is  atmosphere  from 
incident.  Miss  Baillie's  whole  system  is  built  up  on  logic  instead  of 
imagination,  and  is  poetically  dead.  She  was  greatly  overpraised  by 
her  fellow  countrymen,  especially  Scott  and  John  Wilson;  her  recep- 
tion in  the  southern  kingdom  does  not  appear  to  have  been  so  much 
beyond  her  deserts.  Like  Wordsworth  she  advocated  simple  diction, 
but  like  him  used  many  unlifelike  inversions  in  her  poetry. 

Perhaps  Miss  Baillie  would  have  written  better  on  her  native 
heather.  Certainly  her  London  home  could  not  have  been  as  inspiring 
to  her  as  the  city  frequented  by  Leyden  and  Scott.  "I  don't  wonder 
that  any  one  residing  in  Edinburgh  should  write  poetically,"  said 
Washington  Irving;  "I  rambled  about  the  bridges  and  on  Calton 
height  yesterday,  in  a  perfect  intoxication  of  the  mind.  I  did  not 
visit  a  single  public  building;  but  merely  gazed  and  reveled  on  the 
romantic  scenery  around  me."  "It  seemed  as  if  the  rock  and  castle 
assumed  a  new  aspect  every  time  I  looked  at  them;  and  Arthur's 

[  87  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

seat  was  perfect  witchcraft."  The  landscape  of  Scotland  had  its 
relation  to  her  poetry. 

Behind  all  these  northern  writers  was  the  fervid  national  spirit, 
rendered  more  tense  by  the  danger  to  their  national  ideals  from 
social,  industrial,  and  educational  conquest.  "Scotland  and  England 
sound  like  division,  do  what  ye  can,"  wrote  Wordsworth  to  Scott 
in  1803.  The  author  of  "The  Lay"  felt  keenly  that 

This  is  my  own,  my  native  land. 

Leyden  in  his  labors  for  "The  Minstrelsy"  "was  equally  interested 
by  friendship  for  the  editor,  and  by  his  own  patriotic  zeal  for  the 
honor  of  the  Scottish  borders."  Burns  only  a  few  years  before 
had  hoped 

That  I  for  poor  auld  Scotland's  sake 
Some  usefu'  plan  or  book  could  make, 
Or  sing  a  sang  at  least. 

At  this  time  the  Lake  and  Bristol  authors  were  citizens  of  the  world, 
critics  of  their  nation.  They  were  regarded,  where  they  were  known 
at  all,  as  revolutionary  versifiers  rather  than  reformers  in  poetry. 
But  the  poetry  of  the  northern  writers  was,  and  was  felt  to  be,  the 
national  product  of 

Caledonia,  stem  and  wild, 
Meet  nurse  for  a  poetic  child. 


[88] 


CHAPTER  IV 

Poets  and  Authors  of  the  Lakes 

The  effect  of  landscape  beauty  on  the  susceptible  minds  of  poets  is 
never  negligible,  and  was  doubly  strong  around  the  year  1800.  The 
great  popularity  of  Cowper^s  "Task"  with  its  graphic  bits  of  rural 
scenery,  the  widely  read  treatises  of  William  Gilpin  on  the  pic- 
turesque in  landscape,  the  influences  of  Burns  and  Rousseau  and 
others,  had  made  literary  minds  keenly  observing  and  receptive. 
Through  those  enthusiastic  days  the  poets  of  different  regions  might 
be  expected,  even  more  than  usual,  to  take  on,  in  Shelley's  words, 
the  color  of  "the  very  leaves  under  which  they  pass."  The  scenery 
of  the  Lake  region,  isolated,  austere,  and  magnificent,  was  well  cal- 
culated to  inspire  a  poetry  of  little  contemporary  appeal  but  of  deep 
and  enduring  power.  It  had  never  produced  anything  but  the  litera- 
ture of  nature.  Gray's  "Journal  in  the  Lakes,"  written  the  year 
before  Wordsworth  was  born,  breathes  of  another  world  than  that 
of  contemporary  midland  writings.  A  journey  here  called  out  from 
Mrs.  Radcliffe  tiie  genuine  touch  that  we  miss  in  her  novels.  William 
Gilpin  had  published  two  volumes  on  its  "picturesqueness"  in  1789. 
Before  1800  this  region  had  produced  practically  no  poetry  for  gen- 
erations, Wordsworth  having  written  nothing  there  but  his  immature 
"Evening  Walk."  After  that  date  it  became  a  nursery  of  poets  and 
authors,  and  continued  so  to  some  extent  throughout  the  nineteenth 
century.  Even  the  bookish  Southey,  though  he  failed  to  realize  his 
hopes  later,  cried  out  the  day  after  his  arrival:  "Would  that  you 
could  see  these  lakes  and  mountains!  how  wonderful  they  are!  how 
aweful  in  their  beauty!  All  the  poet-part  of  me  will  be  fed  and 
fostered  here." 

"The  Lake  School  of  Poetry"  was  a  common  expression  among 

[  89  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

critics  and  reviewers  in  Wordsworth's  day;  but  in  truth  that  region 
had  no  school  of  poetry.  There  was  a  scattered  body  of  authors; 
but  there  was  limited  social  intercourse,  hardly  any  accepted  literary 
dogma  or  method.  Such  likenesses  as  existed  were  due  to  a  common 
isolation  or  atmosphere,  or  way  of  life,  rather  than  the  result  of  a 
school.  There  had  been  more  mutual  constructive  criticism,  more 
social  organization,  more  cross  currents  of  influence  around  Bristol 
than  there  were  in  the  Lake  region. 

After  1803  Southey  with  his  own  family  and  Coleridge's  wife  and 
children  lived  at  Keswick,  and  Wordsworth  after  1799  in  or  near 
Grasmere  fourteen  miles  to  the  southeast.  A  few  miles  further  down 
was  the  home  of  Charles  Lloyd  near  Ambleside  where  he  resided 
1800-1815.  Coleridge,  "the  Wandering  Jew  of  literature,"  as  some- 
one contemptuously  called  him,  came  and  went  like  a  troubled  spirit, 
and  occasionally  stayed  with  his  family  at  Southey's,  but  more  often 
with  the  Wordsworths.  From  1800  to  18 10  he  spent  about  half  his 
time  fitfully  in  the  Lake  district;  after  that  he  lived  in  London  or 
near  the  scenes  of  his  faded  hopes  around  Bristol.  In  1807  two 
young  college  men,  Thomas  De  Quincey  and  John  Wilson  (Christo- 
pher North),  drawn  by  their  enthusiastic  hero-worship  for  Words- 
worth, settled  in  the  region.  De  Quincey  took  the  cottage  at  Gras- 
mere recently  vacated  by  Wordsworth;  and  although  like  his  fellow 
opium-eater,  Coleridge,  he  was  sometimes  a  bird  of  passage,  he  lived 
mostly  in  Westmoreland  until  1820.  Wilson,  from  about  1807  to 
181 5,  made  his  home  at  Elleray  near  the  shores  of  Lake  Windermere, 
six  or  seven  miles  from  Wordsworth  and  twenty-one  from  Southey. 
By  actual  measure  distances  were  less  than  they  had  been  around 
Bristol;  but  roads  were  worse,  winter  snows  were  deeper,  and  the 
leading  men  were  older,  so  that  the  authors  as  a  whole  formed  less 
of  a  social  unit.  Nevertheless,  two  years  after  coming  to  Keswick, 
Southey  speaks  of  himself  as  enjoying  ''intimate  intercourse"  with 
Wordsworth  and  Coleridge.  There  is  a  certain  likeness  in  the  general 
alignment  to  that  of  1798  when  Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  and  their 
satellites  were  around  Nether  Stowey,  and  Southey  at  Bristol  or 
Westbury  over  thirty  miles  away. 

-  The  phrase  "The  Lake  Poets"  is  only  a  trifle  less  misleading  than 

[  90  ] 


POETS  AND  AUTHORS  OF  THE  LAKES 

"The  Lake  School."  There  was  but  one  great  poet  whose  main  and 
most  characteristic  work  was  done  in  that  region;  and  that  was 
Wordsworth.  The  amount  of  verse  which  Coleridge  produced  there, 
good  or  bad,  is  pitifully  small;  and  of  this  the  second  half  of  "Chris- 
tabel,"  the  "Ode  on  Dejection/^  and  the  "Hymn  before  Sunrise,  in 
the  Valley  of  Chamouni''  are  the  only  ones  of  much  intrinsic  value. 
Even  these  are  none  of  them  equal  to  the  supreme  work  of  earlier 
days.  They  are  a  saddening  aftermath  of  the  great  visionary  of 
Nether  Stowey.  The  bulk  of  Southey's  short  poems  were  written 
before  he  came  there ;  and  several  of  the  remainder  were  the  drearily 
unlocalized,  unindividualized  work  of  the  poet  laureate.  Of  his  five 
long  epics,  "Joan"  and  "Thalaba"  were  printed,  and  "Madoc" 
finished  though  not  published  by  1801.  The  fourth,  "The  Curse  of 
Kehama,"  had  been  conceived  in  Lisbon  that  same  year  as  "The 
Curse  of  Keradon,"  and  some  of  it  probably  written  before  the 
author  came  to  Keswick;  its  publication  in  1810  was  a  belated 
harvest  of  a  pre-Lake  period.  "Roderick"  alone,  of  all  these  long 
narratives,  was  wholly  the  product  of  the  Cumberland  mountains. 

Southey  after  1803  was  not  so  much  a  Lake  poet  as  a  Lake  man 
of  letters.  In  1799  he  wrote  to  Cottle:  "I  have  lately  made  up  my 
mind  to  undertake  one  great  historical  work,  the  History  of  Portu- 
gal"; and  thus  at  the  age  of  twenty-six  the  historian  began  to  crowd 
out  the  poet.  Four  years  later  he  said:  "The  more  I  read,  the  more 
do  I  find  the  necessity  of  going  to  old  authors  for  information,  and 
the  sad  ignorance  and  dishonesty  of  our  boasted  historians.  If  God 
do  but  give  me  life,  and  health,  and  eyesight,  I  will  show  how  history 
should  be  written,  and  exhibit  such  a  specimen  of  indefatigable 
honesty  as  the  world  has  never  yet  seen."  By  1807  we  have:  "My 
own  lays  are  probably  at  an  end.  That  portion  of  my  time  which  I 
can  afford  to  employ  in  labouring  for  fame  is  given  to  historical 
pursuits;  and  poetry  will  not  procure  for  me  anything  more  sub- 
stantial. This  motive  alone  would  not,  perhaps,  wean  me  from  an 
old  calling,  if  I  were  not  grown  more  attached  to  the  business  of 
historical  research,"^  and  more  disposed  to  instruct  and  admonish 
mankind  than  to   amuse   them."   Seeing   that  the   first  idea   of 

♦Italics  ours. 

[  91  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

"Roderick"  had  been  conceived  as  early  as  1805,  his  own  lays  were 
"at  an  end"  after  1807,  save  for  the  finishing  of  those  already  in 
the  works.  At  forty-one  he  acknowledged  to  a  friend  what  he  never 
acknowledged  to  the  reviewers:  "As  a  poet  I  know  where  I  have 
fallen  short.  ...  As  an  historian  I  shall  come  nearer  my  mark. 
For  thorough  research,  indeed,  and  range  of  materials,  I  do  not 
believe  that  the  History  of  Portugal  will  ever  have  been  surpassed." 
His  judgment  was  right.  To-day  Southey  as  biographer,  historian, 
and  man  of  letters  completely  overshadows  the  poet.  The  negative 
merits  of  these  prose  works  have  always  been  acknowledged,  and 
their  positive  virtues  are  beginning  to  be  recognized;  but  any  de- 
tailed discussion  of  them  lies  outside  of  our  present  field. 
^More  important  for  us  is  the  fact  that  Southey,  both  as  poet  and 
scholar,  introduced  a  minor  new  current  into  English  verse,  that  of 
Spanish  medievalism.  The  "Return  to  the  Middle  Ages,"  like  the 
"Return  to  Nature,"  took  on  many  forms  and  drew  from  many 
fields.  In  general  these  traditions  began  at  first  hand,  the  fruit  of 
experience  rather  than  mere  fancy,  to  a  much  greater  degree  than 
has  usually  been  supposed.  Mallet,  who  started  the  long  wave  of 
Norse  medievalism  followed  by  Gray,  had  been  Professor  of  Belles 
Lettres  in  the  Royal  University  at  Copenhagen.  The  German 
medieval  tradition  derived  from  German  poets,  Goethe's  "Goetz," 
Schiller's  "Robbers,"  and  their  imitators.  The  tradition  of  medieval 
France  developed  very  late,  for  lack  of  antiquarian  interest  among 
French  literati  to  kindle  the  English.  The  romantic  interest  in  the 
medieval  Orient  was  ignited  from  the  Oriental  travels  of  Byron.  It 
was  not  until  he  and  Shelley  and  Landor  had  explored  Italy  that 
English  authors  wrote  much  of  the  Italian  Middle  Ages.  Southey 
made  a  short  trip  to  Spain  and  Portugal  in  1796,  and  a  much  longer 
journey  at  the  turn  of  the  century,  before  the  end  of  which  he  was 
"almost  as  well  acquainted  with  Portuguese  literature,  as  with  that 
of  my  own  country."  He  was  the  first  man  who  made  the  past  of  the 
Iberian  peninsula  an  important  factor  in  modern  English  poetry. 
Several  of  his  short  poems,  of  which  "Queen  Orraca"  (1803)  is  the 
best,  are  straggling  evidences  of  his  interest;  a  much  greater  is  the 
last,  and  perhaps  the  best,  of  his  epics,  the  story  of  that  ill-fated 

[  92  ] 


POETS  AND  AUTHORS  OF  THE  LAKES 

king  whose  lust  brought  the  Moors  into  Spain.  This  poem  came  after 
Wellington's  campaign  had  turned  all  eyes  toward  the  Peninsula; 
and  by  one  of  those  spontaneous  reactions  which  occur  simulta- 
neously in  different  minds,  three  poets,  all  in  correspondence,  yet  all 
apparently  starting  independently,  were  at  work  on  this  same  theme 
at  the  same  time,  Southey,  Walter  Scott,  and  W.  S.  Landor. 

Southey's  prose,  including  translations  and  adaptations,  probably 
did  more  to  form  the  Spanish  current  than  his  poems.  His  "Letters 
from  Spain  and  Portugal,"  published  1797,  are  travel  diaries  of  his 
first  journey.  His  "Chronicle  of  the  Cid"  (1808)  is  a  mosaic  of 
different  Spanish  sources  rather  than  a  translation,  but  is  exceed- 
ingly readable  and  took  well  with  the  public.  The  following  typical 
passage  from  it  makes  one  think  of  "Ivanhoe":  "Each  bent  down 
with  his  face  to  the  saddle-bow,  and  gave  his  horse  the  spur.  And 
they  met  all  six  with  such  a  shock,  that  they  who  looked  on  expected 
to  see  them  all  fall  dead.  Pero  Bermudez  and  Ferrando  Gonzalez 
encountered,  and  the  shield  of  Pero  Bermudez  was  pierced,  but  the 
spear  passed  through  on  one  side,  and  hurt  him  not,  and  brake  in 
two  places;  and  he  sat  firm  in  his  seat.  One  blow  he  received,  but 
he  gave  another;  he  drove  his  lance  through  Ferrando's  shield,  at 
his  breast,  so  that  nothing  availed  him.  Ferrando's  breastplate  was 
threefold;  two  plates  the  spear  went  clean  through,  and  drove  the 
third  in  before  it,  with  the  velmez  and  the  shirt,  into  the  breast, 
near  his  heart;  .  .  .  and  the  girth  and  the  poitral  of  his  horse  burst, 
and  he  and  the  saddle  went  together  over  the  horse's  heels,  and  the 
spear  in  him,  and  all  thought  him  dead." 

Southey  also  translated  the  famous  old  "Amadis  of  Gaul,"  with 
its  giants  and  wizards  and  parallelisms  to  the  Arthurian  cycle;  and 
the  Portuguese  "Palmerin  of  England."  "Oh,  sweet  and  romantic 
Spain,"  cried  Campbell  in  1808;  and  after  1808  many  other  writers 
followed  Southey  in  this  picturesque  new  field.  There  were  Scott's 
"Vision  of  Don  Roderick,"  Landor's  "Count  JuHan,"  Byron's  first 
canto  of  "Childe  Harold"  and  "Very  Mournful  Ballad  of  Alhama"; 
the  Spanish  poems  of  Mrs.  Hemans;  and  the  "Ancient  Spanish 
Ballads"  of  Lockhart;  to  say  nothing  of  those  minor  fry  who  flock 
around  a  good  literary  opening  like  vultures  around  a  carcass. 

[93  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

As  an  antiquarian  and  scholar  Southey  felt  an  affinity  for  Scott 
which  was  absolutely  lacking  in  Wordsworth.  We  have  all  heard 
what  the  latter  wrote  to  Scott  about  "Marmion":  "I  think  your  end 
has  been  attained.  That  it  is  not  the  end  which  I  should  wish  you 
to  propose  to  yourself,  you  will  be  aware."  But  Southey  said,  "I  am 
not  willing  to  admit  that  some  of  the  situations  in  the  Lay  and 
Marmion  can  be  outdone";  and  earlier,  before  they  had  met,  in 
connection  with  "Amadis"  wrote  of  Scott,  "he  is  a  man  whose  taste 
accords  with  mine." 

Southey  at  the  age  of  thirty-nine  speaks  of  "a  sort  of  autumnal 
or  evening  tone  of  mind,  coming  upon  me  a  little  earlier  than  it  does 
upon  most  men";  and  something  of  that  "evening  tone"  is  found 
in  his  later  poems,  both  long  and  short.  The  humor  so  obvious 
during  his  Bristol  period  is  almost  entirely  gone;  so  is  the  influence 
of  Gothic  melodrama.  In  politics  the  revolutionary  note  is  changed 
to  its  opposite,  but  in  poetry  it  is  dropped  altogether.  "I  am  no 
more  ashamed  of  having  been  a  republican,"  he  told  Crabb  Robin- 
son, "than  I  am  of  having  been  a  child." 

Another  effect  of  his  lonely  life  at  Keswick,  where  "from  Novem- 
ber till  June  not  a  soul  do  we  see, — except,  perhaps,  Wordsworth, 
once  or  twice  during  the  time,"  was  to  make  him  fall  back  more  and 
more  upon  books  as  his  only  companions.  His  library  at  his  death 
comprised  some  14,000  volumes,  many  of  them  rare  and  costly. 
Perhaps  this  influence  was  not  good  for  a  man  always  too  much  of  a 
bookworm;  yet  one  of  the  noblest  poems  he  ever  wrote, 

"My  days  among  the  dead  are  past," 

grew  out  of  it;  and  that  in  turn  is  little  more  than  a  versification  of 
a  letter  to  Coleridge:  "Talk  of  the  happiness  of  getting  a  great  prize 
in  the  lottery!  What  is  that  to  the  opening  a  box  of  books!  The  joy 
upon  lifting  up  the  cover,  must  be  something  like  what  we  shall  feel 
when  Peter  the  Porter  opens  the  door  upstairs,  and  says.  Please  to 
walk  in,  sir.  ...  It  will  be  a  great  delight  to  me  in  the  next  world, 
to  take  a  fly  and  visit  these  old  worthies,  who  are  my  only  society 
here,  and  to  tell  them,  what  excellent  company  I  found  them  here 
at  the  Lakes  of  Cumberland,  two  centuries  after  they  had  been  dead 

[  94  ] 


POETS  AND  AUTHORS  OF  THE  LAKES 

and  turned  to  dust.  In  plain  truth,  I  exist  more  among  the  dead  than 
the  living,  and  think  more  about  them,  and,  perhaps,  feel  more  about 
them."  Any  experience  felt  as  deeply  as  that  may  become  poetry  in 
its  kind,  may  introduce  us  to  that 

One  great  society  alone  on  earth: 

The  noble  Living  and  the  noble  Dead. 

We  cannot  believe  Southey  so  much  more  unwise  than  our  modern 
realists  because  he  filled  his  brain  with  the  distilled  quintessence  of 
a  dead  sage's  mind  rather  than  with  the  unassorted  garbage  of  a 
living  prostitute's. 

When  we  consider  the  vast  arc  of  thought  and  knowledge  sub- 
tended by  Southey's  mind,  the  purity  and  pliability  of  his  style,  we 
cannot  help  asking.  Why  does  this  man  after  all  remain  only  a 
second-rate  prose  writer  and  a  third-rate  poet?  One  reason  must 
have  been  the  economic  pressure  under  which  he  lived.  Wordsworth 
hardly  earned  a  dollar  during  his  life.  Southey  from  early  manhood 
had  the  total  support  for  his  own  family  as  well  as  Lovell's  widow, 
and  partial  support  for  that  of  Coleridge,  in  the  words  of  Words- 
worth, "a  little  world  dependent  upon  his  industry."  "Drudge, 
drudge,  drudge,"  he  groans.  "Do  you  know  Quarles's  emblem  of  the 
soul  that  tries  to  fly,  but  is  chained  by  the  leg  to  earth?"  Want  and 
suffering  may  produce  great  poetry;  merciless  routine  kills  it.  But 
back  of  that  there  were  fundamental  weaknesses  in  his  own  nature, 
one  of  which  was  his  fatal  overproductivity.  "The  more  I  write,"  he 
says,  "the  more  I  have  to  write.  I  have  a  Helicon  kind  of  dropsy 
upon  me,  and  crescit  indulgens  sibi."  Could  all  his  miscellaneous 
articles  be  collected,  he  would,  says  his  son,  "unquestionably  be 
found  to  have  been  one  of  the  most  voluminous  writers  of  any  age 
or  of  any  country."  Where  one  brain  has  so  many  children,  they 
are  all  apt  to  be  anemic.  At  bottom,  above  all,  he  was  probably  a 
man  of  talent  trying  to  play  the  role  of  genius.  Yet,  when  we  con- 
sider the  far-reaching  effect  of  his  writings  and  research,  who  can 
question  the  fact  that  our  literature  is  richer  because  he  lived  ? 

The  story  of  Coleridge  during  this  period  is  the  story  of  a  soul's 
tragedy,  of  "Hesperus  that  led  the  starry  host"  sinking  in  an  opium 

[  95  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

night.  De  Quincey,  who  was  on  the  ground  and  saw,  although  he  can- 
not always  be  trusted,  tells  us:  ''The  fine  saying  of  Addison  is  famil- 
iar to  most  readers, — that  Babylon  in  ruins  is  not  so  affecting  a  spec- 
tacle, or  so  solemn,  as  a  human  mind  overthrown  by  lunacy.  How 
much  more  awful,  then,  when  a  mind  so  regal  as  that  of  Coleridge  is 
overthrown,  or  threatened  with  overthrow,  not  by  a  visitation  of 
Providence,  but  by  the  treachery  of  its  own  will,  and  the  conspiracy, 
as  it  were,  of  himself  against  himself!"  "But,  apparently,  he  was 
not  happy;  opium,  was  it,  or  what  was  it,  that  poisoned  all  natural 
pleasure  at  its  sources?  He  burrowed  continually  deeper  into 
scholastic  subtleties  and  metaphysical  abstractions  ...  At  two  or 
four  o'clock  in  the  afternopn  he  would  make  his  first  appearance. 
Through  the  silence  of  the  night,  when  all  other  lights  had  dis- 
appeared, in  the  quiet  cottages  of  Grasmere,  his  lamp  might  be  seen 
invariably  by  the  belated  traveler,  as  he  descended  the  long  steep 
from  Dunmailraise;  and  at  seven  or  eight  o'clock  in  the  morning, 
when  man  was  going  forth  to  his  labor,  this  insulated  son  of  reverie 
was  retiring  to  bed."  Coleridge  was  only  thirty-seven  when  Words- 
worth wrote  his  epitaph  as  a  creative  intellect:  "I  give  it  to  you  as 
my  deliberate  opinion,  formed  upon  proofs  which  have  been 
strengthening  for  years,  that  he  neither  will  nor  can  execute  any- 
thing of  important  benefit  either  to  himself,  his  family,  or  mankind. 
Neither  his  talents  nor  his  genius — mighty  as  they  are — nor  his  vast 
information  will  avail  him  anything.  They  are  all  frustrated  by  a 
derangement  in  his  intellectual  and  moral  constitution."  A  "poet  of 
the  Lakes"  indeed!  "Even  the  finest  spring  day  does  not  tempt  him 
to  seek  the  fresh  air,"  Dorothy  tells  us;  "and  this  beautiful  valley 
seems  a  blank  to  him."  It  was  probably  a  great  mistake  that  a  man 
so  connatally  unhealthy  ever  took  up  his  residence  in  the  damp  Lake 
region.  "We  would  not  on  any  account  that  he  should  fix  himself  in 
this  rainy  part  of  England,"  wrote  Wordsworth  prophetically  in 
1804.  During  a  few  months  he  edited  his  abortive  periodical  The 
Friend,  the  most  unpunctual  magazine  that  ever  offended  sub- 
scribers; but  for  the  most  part  he  haunted  that  literary  arena  like 
a  ghost,  deedless,  heedless,  and  unheeded.  For  two  years  or  so,  it  is 

[96] 


POETS  AND  AUTHORS  OF  THE  LAKES 

true,  the  first  of  his  Cumberland  residence,  he  was  thrilled  occa- 
sionally by  the  grandeur  of  the  environing  landscape.    He  heard  how 

Ancient  Skiddaw,  stem  and  proud, 

In  sullen  majesty  replying, 

Thus  spake  from  out  his  helm  of  cloud. 

He  began  the  second  part  of  "Christabel"  with  a  glance  over 

Langdale  Pike  and  Witch's  Lair, 
And  Dungeon-ghyll  so  foully  rent. 

In  his  "Hymn  Before  Sunrise,  in  the  Valley  of  Chamouni,"  the  de- 
scription of  Mont  Blanc,  which  he  had  never  seen,  may  have  owed 
something  to  the  Cumberland  mountains  around  him.  Certainly  it 
has  many  likenesses  to  Wordsworth's  earlier  description  of  a 
neighboring  height: 

This  Peak,  so  high. 
Above  us,  and  so  distant  in  its  height, 
Is  visible;  and  often  seems  to  send 
Its  own  deep  quiet  to  restore  our  hearts. 
The  meteors  make  of  it  a  favorite  haunt: 
The  star  of  Jove,  so  beautiful  and  large 

I  In  the  mid  heavens,  is  never  half  so  fair 

f  As  when  he  shines  above  it. 

Also  Coleridge  may  have  drawn  his  Alpine 

I  pine-groves  with  your  soft  and  soul-like  sounds 

from  the  Westmoreland  scene  which  made  Wordsworth  write 

The  fir-grove  murmurs  with  a  sea-like  sound. 

All  this,  however,  was  a  mere  passing  ripple.  In  1802  he  wrote  to 
Southey:  "All  my  poetic  genius  ...  is  gone,  and  I  have  been  fool 
enough  to  suffer  deeply  in  my  mind,  regretting  the  loss."  In  that 
same  year  he  composed  the  last  of  his  great  poems,  the  "Ode  on 
Dejection,"  no  product  of  landscape  beauty  but  the  wail  of  the 
opium-eater's  despair. 

I  [  97  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

A  grief  without  a  pang,  void,  dark,  and  drear, 
A  stifled,  drowsy,  unimpassioned  grief. 
Which  finds  no  natural  outlet,  no  relief, 
In  word,  or  sigh,  or  tear. 

But  now  afflictions  bow  me  down  to  earth; 
Nor  care  I  that  they  rob  me  of  my  mirth. 

But  oh!  each  visitation 
Suspends  what  nature  gave  me  at  my  birth. 
My  shaping  spirit  of  Imagination. 

Fuit  Troia;  juit  poeta. 

The  minor  authors  of  the  Lake  region  may  be  dismissed  briefly. 
On  Charles  Lloyd  much  of  the  time  there  rested  a  mental  cloud 
fully  as  terrible  in  its  different  way,  as  that  overshadowing  Cole- 
ridge. The  other  Lakers  visited  him  as  friends;  but  seem  to  have 
had  little  in  common  with  him  in  literary  taste  or  activities.  His 
preferences  were  developing  along  French  and  neo-classic  lines  with 
which  Wordsworth  and  Southey  were  not  in  sympathy.  Hartley 
Coleridge  remembered  "dear  Charles  Lloyd  reading  Pope's  ^Trans- 
lation of  Statins'  in  the  little  drawing  room  at  Old  Brathay.  .  .  . 
Lloyd  appreciated  Pope  as  rightly  as  any  man  I  ever  knew,  which 
I  ascribe  partly  to  his  intelligent  enjoyment  of  French  writers." 
It  was  Southey  who  said  of  French  that  "poetry  of  the  higher  order 
is  as  impossible  in  that  language  as  it  is  in  Chinese."  Lloyd  like 
Cowper  believed  himself  the  object  of  divine  wrath,  and  perhaps 
like  Cowper  turned  to  translation  as  a  mental  diversion.  At  any 
rate  his  only  published  work  during  this  period  was  a  three-volume 
translation  of  Alfiieri's  plays  in  1815;  and  he  also  translated,  but 
never  printed,  about  half  of  Ovid's  "Metamorphoses."  He  produced 
no  original  poetry  in  the  Lake  region;  and  his  version  of  Alfieri,  a 
pronounced  neo-classic  dramatist,  was  far  enough  from  belonging 
to  the  same  school  as  "The  Excursion."  In  the  year  in  which  it 
appeared  Wordsworth  declared:  "It  is  unaccountable  to  me  how 
men  could  ever  proceed,  as  Racine  (and  Alfieri  I  believe)  used  to 
do,  first  writing  their  plays  in  prose,  and  afterwards  turning  them 
into  verse.  It  may  answer  with  so  slavish  a  language  and  so  enslaved 

[  98  ] 


POETS  AND  AUTHORS  OF  THE  LAKES 

a  taste  as  the  French  have."  Curiously  enough,  all  the  poetical 
reminiscences  of  Lloyd's  Westmoreland  life  turn  up  years  later  in 
his  "Desultory  Thoughts  in  London."  To  that  volume  is  prefixed 
a  suggestive  quotation  from  Rousseau:  "Si  je  veux  peindre  le  prin- 
temps,  il  faut  que  je  sois  en  hyver;  si  je  veux  decrire  un  beau  pay- 
sage,  il  faut  que  je  sois  dans  les  murs";  and  "in  this  city's  vast 
receptacle,"  amid  "Its  countless  eyes,  its  multitudinous  will,"  the 
poet,  partially  recovered  in  mental  health,  wrote  some  four  hundred 
lines  on  the  beauty  of  his  Westmoreland  home  and  the  neighboring 
lakes. 

I  had  a  cottage  in  a  Paradise, 

he  tells  us. 

The  Pyracanthus  with  its  glossy  green. 

And  scarlet  berries;  and,  as  yet  unsung. 
The  jasmine  white  and  yellow,  deck'd  this  scene; 

And  o'er  our  little  porch  tenacious  clung, 
And  round  each  window,  (while  beneath  them  seen 

Moss  roses  peeped,  like  birds,  in  nests,  when  young. 
From  beds  of  leaves,)  with  red  and  purple  flower 
From  thread-like  stem,  the  pensile  virgin's  bower.  .  .  . 

Dreams  afterwards  I  dream'd,  and  this  the  place 

To  which  their  consummation  evermore 
I  did  refer.    There  is  a  mountain  grace, 

A  grace  peculiar,  which  I  ne'er  before. 
Or  since,  beheld,  in  its  romantic  face: 

In  cove  of  mighty  hills,  amid  the  roar 
Of  unseen  cataracts,  whose  voice  you  hear. 
It  stands! — meet  haunt  for  visionary  fear! 

Reverent  and  enthusiastic  allusions  to  Wordsworth  occur  several 
times  in  this  poem. 

De  Quincey,  though  a  Lake  resident  for  over  a  decade,  was  not 
a  Lake  author.  All  his  literary  work  was  done  subsequently  in 
London  and  Edinburgh.  Many  years  later,  however,  through  his 
articles  published  in  Tait's  Edinburgh  Magazine,  he  became  the 

[  99  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

historian  of  the  Hterary  life  quorum  pars  magna  fuit.  He  had  come 
to  Westmoreland  as  an  adorer  of  Wordsworth,  with 

all  the  sweet  and  sudden  passion  of  youth 
Toward  greatness  in  its  elder. 

After  a  few  years  his  attitude  became  more  critical  and  qualified; 
partly  because  he  found  his  idol  in  some  ways  very  human,  still 
more  because  his  own  use  of  narcotics  was  gradually  deadening  in 
him  the  generous  power  to  appreciate  nobleness.  His  literary 
reminiscences  are  a  medley  of  keen  analysis,  noble  prose,  wanton 
inaccuracy,  and  petty  or  spiteful  gossip.  In  spite  of  their  defects, 
due  mainly,  it  is  probable,  to  the  depraving  laudanum  cup,  they 
form  a  highly  readable  addition  to  the  literature  of  the  Lakes. 

John  Wilson  (later  the  Christopher  North  of  magazine  fame) 
was  a  full-blooded  young  Scotchman  with  a  hero-worship  that  his 
countryman  Carlyle  would  have  admired.  Before  going  to  Oxford 
he  had  read  Wordsworth's  poems  with  delight  and  written  to  tell 
the  author  so.  "He  had  been  more  than  a  year  in  this  neighborhood," 
writes  Dorothy,  "before  he  could  resolve  to  call  upon  my  brother — 
this  from  modesty,  and  a  fear  of  intruding  upon  him — but  since 
that  time  we  have  had  frequent  intercourse  with  him,  and  are  all 
most  affectionately  attached  to  him.  He  has  the  utmost  reverence 
for  my  brother,  and  has  no  delight  superior  to  that  of  conversing 
with  him;  and  he  has  often  said  that  he  is  indebted  to  him  for  pre- 
serving the  best  part  of  his  nature."  Wilson  was  at  this  time  rich 
in  money,  brains,  and  physical  vigor,  and  consequently  rather  lazy 
for  lack  of  any  spur.  He  published  two  mediocre  poems  as  a  result 
of  leisure  among  the  Lakes,  "The  Isle  of  Palms"  in  the  middle  of 
his  residence  there,  and  "The  City  of  the  Plague"  at  its  close.  The 
first  is  a  pleasant  but  rather  lax  narrative  poem,  in  which  two  lovers 
are  wrecked  on  a  desert  island  and  so  forced  unwillingly  into  Rous- 
seau's life  of  primeval  nature,  to  their  great  advantage.  The  influence 
of  the  earlier  and  more  obvious  elements  in  Wordsworth  is  plain. 
The  second  is  a  rambling  blank  verse  drama  describing  the  Great 
Plague  in  London  with  horrors  that  are  none  the  less  "Gothic" 

[    100   ] 


POETS  AND  AUTHORS  OF  THE  LAK^         :  .'    :  , 

because  they  very  probably  occurred, — "out-Germanizing  the  Ger- 
mans/' as  Southey  put  it. 

Oh!  ours  were  dreadful  orgies! — At  still  midnight 
We  sallied  out,  in  mimic  grave-clothes  clad, 
Aping  the  dead,  and  in  some  churchyard  danced 
A  dance  that  ofttimes  had  a  mortal  close.  .  .  . 
Or  in  a  hearse  we  sat,  which  one  did  drive 
In  masquerade  habiliments  of  death. 

The  play  would  hardly  be  considered  belonging  to  the  same  school 
as  either  "Roderick"  or  "Michael."  One  detail,  however,  connects 
it  with  the  Lake  literature,  when  the  hero  amid  his  own  danger 
rejoices  in  believing  that  his  betrothed  is  safe  at  her  home  far  away 
among  the  Westmoreland  lakes. 

William  Hazlitt,  "a  person  for  whom  I  never  had  any  love,"  says 
Wordsworth,  "but  with  whom  I  had  for  a  short  time  a  good  deal  of 
intimacy,"  made  a  short  tour  in  the  Lakes,  painted  some  pictures 
there,  and  is  said  by  De  Quincey  to  have  proposed  to  Dorothy 
Wordsworth.  He  was,  far  more  truly  than  Coleridge,  "the  Wander- 
ing Jew  of  literature,"  his  great  ability  connecting  him  with  many 
literary  camps,  and  his  repellant  personality  making  him  welcome 
in  none.  Neither  he  nor  Lamb  was  a  Lake  author,  though  Lamb  also 
visited  his  old  friends. 

As  we  have  said  before,  the  one  great  "Lake  poet"  was  Words- 
worth. For  him  alone  this  was  the  region  of  his  birth,  of  his  early 
training,  of  those  transcendent  visions  that  "The  Prelude"  records. 
Southey  in  1803  became  a  Lake  poet  instead  of  a  Welsh  one, 
because  a  prospective  landlord  in  Wales  proved  obdurate  about 
repairing  the  kitchen;  Wordsworth  came  here  like  a  homing  bird, 
not  through  chance  but  through  mental  affinity.  Southey  admired 
him,  Coleridge  inspired  him,  Wilson,  and  for  a  time  De  Quincey, 
knelt  before  him  as  their  high  priest  of  literature;  but  he  and  his 
poetry  stand  essentially  alone.  In  181 2,  when  his  best  work  was 
done,  he  mentioned  "an  utter  inability  on  my  part  to  associate  with 
any  class  or  body  of  literary  men,  and  thus  subject  myself  to  the 
necessity  of  sacrificing  my  own  judgment  and  of  lending  even 
indirectly  countenance  or  support  to  principles, — either  of  taste, 
I  [  loi  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

politics,  morals  or  religion, — ^which  I  disapprove."  His  interest  in 
contemporary  moral  and  political  problems  was  keen;  but  his  letters 
are  full  of  evidence  that  he  deliberately  insulated  himself  from  the 
more  popular  currents  of  contemporary  literature.  In  1814  he 
warned  Gillies  against  Byron  as  "a  bad  writer."  "I  know  little  of 
Blackwood's  Magazine,  and  wish  to  know  less,"  he  wrote,  though 
Blackwood's  favored  his  poetry.  As  for  the  hostile  Edinburgh 
Review,  Dorothy  writes  that  her  brother  "will  not  suffer  it  to  come 
into  his  house,  as  you  know;  but  we  females  have."  ''Except  now 
and  then,  when  Southey  accommodates  me,  I  see  no  new  books 
whatever."  "On  new  books  I  have  not  spent  five  shillings  for  the 
last  five  years."  "The  only  modern  books  that  I  read  are  those  of 
travels,  or  such  as  relate  to  matters  of  fact, — and  the  only  modern 
books  that  I  care  for." 

-  He  has  been  called  a  "romantic  poet"  and  a  part  of  "the  romantic 
movement."  He  was  inevitably  touched  occasionally  by  the  spirit 
of  his  age;  but  he  neither  belonged  to  it  nor  moved  with  it.  "It  is 
entirely  impossible  that  any  man  can  understand  Milton,  and  fail 
to  perceive  that  Wordsworth  is  a  poet  of  the  same  class  and  of  equal 
powers."  So  wrote  Southey,  the  year  after  "The  Excursion";  and 
whatever  we  may  think  of  the  "equal  powers"  we  shall  find  room 
for  thought  in  the  classification.  Southey  was  not  the  only  contem- 
porary to  notice  it.  Barry  Cornwall  declared  that  "Wordsworth^s 
prototype  was  Milton."  The  sonnets  of  Wordsworth  in  their  ethical 
vigor  are  Miltonic,  not  at  all  in  the  plaintive  vein  of  Bowles,  whose 
influence  had  probably  evaporated  during  the  eight  years  before  the 
first  of  them  was  written.  "In  the  cottage,  Town-end,  Grasmere, 
one  afternoon  in  1801,  my  sister  read  to  me  the  Sonnets  of  Milton. 
I  had  long  been  well  acquainted  with  them,  but  I  was  particularly 
struck  on  that  occasion  with  the  dignified  simplicity  and  majestic 
harmony  that  runs  through  most  of  them.  ...  I  took  fire,  if  I 
may  be  allowed  to  say  so,  and  produced  three  Sonnets  the  same 
afternoon,  the  first  I  ever  wrote  except  an  irregular  one  at  school." 
This  is  the  author's  declaration;  and  he  who  doubts  it  may  read 
"Methought  I  saw  the  footsteps  of  a  throne,"  or  "Two  voices  are 
there;  one  is  of  the  sea."  De  Quincey,  not  far  from  the  time  when 

[  102  ] 


POETS  AND  AUTHORS  OF  THE  LAKES 

these  verses  were  written,  found  a  marked  likeness  between  Words- 
worth's face  and  a  portrait  of  Milton. 

In  metre,  also,  despite  the  fact  that  Miltpn  is  remarkably  sus- 
tained and  Wordsworth  remarkably  uneven,  there  is  more  likeness 
than  has  usually  been  recognized.  Wordsworth  wrote  more  blank 
verse,  and,  after  the  chaff  is  eliminated,  more  good  blank  verse, 
than  any  other  poet  of  the  romantic  generation.  Ward's  "English 
Poets"  quoted  more  lines  from  him  in  this  metre  than  from  Shelley, 
and  three  times  as  many  as  from  any  other  poet  of  the  age.  He  had 
not  Milton's  ear  and  technique;  but  he  had  at  times  a  remarkable 
likeness  in  thought  and  inspiration. 

The  appearance,  instantaneously  disclosed, 
Was  of  a  mighty  city — boldly  say 
A  wilderness  of  building,  sinking  far 
And  self-withdrawn  into  a  boundless  depth, 
Far  sinking  into  splendor — without  end  I 
Fabric  it  seemed  of  diamond  and  of  gold. 
With  alabaster  domes,  and  silver  spires. 
And  blazing  terrace  upon  terrace,  high 
Uplifted;  here,  serene  pavilions  bright. 
In  avenues  disposed ;  there,  towers  begirt 
With  battlements  that  on  their  restless  fronts 
Bore  stars — illumination  of  all  gems! 

Wordsworth  had  Mjltoji's  interest  in  great  political  crises,  and  the 
same  sense  of  ethical  responsibility,  as  shown  in  his  "Ode  to  Duty." 
He  sums  up  the  teaching  of  his  "White  Doe  of  Rylstone"  in  Milton's 
language:  "How  insignificant  a  thing,  for  example,  does  personal 
prowess  appear  compared  with  the  fortitude  of  patience  and  heroic 
martyrdom.'*'^  His  indifference  toward  Scott's  feudal  romances  is 
not  unlike  that  of  the  epic  poet  who  felt  no  eagerness  to  describe 

tilting  furniture,  emblazoned  shields. 
Impresses  quaint,  caparisons  and  steeds. 
Bases  and  tinsel  trappings,  gorgeous  knights 
At  joust  and  tournament ;  then  marshalled  feast 
Served  up  in  hall  with  sewers  and  seneschals. 

♦Italics  ours. 

[  103  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

We  are  not  contending  that  the  Wordsworthian  poems  are  as  a 
whole  closely  like  those  of  Milton.  But  we  do  believe  that  there  was 
much  similarity  in  the  nature  and  ideals  of  the  men,  and  that  the 
writings  of  Wordsworth  are  as  much  like  those  of  his  great  prede- 
cessor as  could  be  reasonably  expected  in  an  age  and  environment 
so  different. 

Wordsworth  is  always  called  "the  poet  of  nature";  but  a  Miltonic 
and  ethical  element  often  underlay  his  feeling  for  landscape  beauty. 
"All  just  and  soHd  pleasure  in  natural  objects,"  he  believed,  "rests 
upon  two  pillars,  God  and  Man."  He  loved  nature  as  a  lyric  poet 
does  language,  partly  for  its  own  beauty,  partly  as  a  medium  of 
expression,  the  language  of  God  to  men.  In  this  respect  he  is  far 
more  akin  to  the  Hebrew  psalmist  and  to  Milton  than  he  is  to  our 
modern  landscape  poets,  those  heapers-up  of  beautiful  details,  who, 
in  Wordsworth's  judgment  as  well  as  Blake's, 

are  led  to  believe  a  lie 
When  we  see  with,  not  through,  the  eye. 

Many  of  his  poems  after  1800  are  the  joint  children  of  Milton 
and  Grasmere,  showing  the  features  sometimes  of  one  parent,  some- 
times of  the  other,  at  times  a  blend  of  both.  The  Lake  region  was 
to  him  not  merely  a  home  but  a  sacred  place,  the  only  ground  where 
he  felt  that  his  poetry  could  reach  its  full  harvest.  Here,  walled 
round  with  seclusion  and  beauty,  guarded  from  the  pettiness  and 
turmoil  of  life,  he  believed  that  he  could  realize  a  vision  not  like 
what  Milton  saw  but  like  what  Milton  would  have  beheld  in  the 
nineteenth  century.  This  hope  is  the  theme  of  his  fragmentary 
"Recluse,"  which  is  the  key  to  his  future  plans,  as  "The  Prelude" 
is  the  key  to  his  past  development.  The  one  book  of  it  written  is 
entitled  "Home  at  Grasmere."  He  tells  how  as  a  boy  he  returned 

here: 

and  sighing  said, 
"What  happy  fortune  were  it  here  to  livel" 

And  now  'tis  mine,  perchance  for  life,  dear  Vale, 
Beloved  Grasmere 

[  104  ] 


POETS  AND  AUTHORS  OF  THE  LAKES 

nowhere  else  is  found, 
Nowhere  (or  is  it  fancy?)  can  be  found 
The  one  sensation  that  is  here;  'tis  here, 
Here  as  it  found  its  way  into  my  heart 
In  childhood,  here  as  it  abides  by  day, 
By  night,  here  only;  or  in  chosen  minds 
That  take  it  with  them  hence,  where'er  they  go. 

'Tis,  but  I  cannot  name  it,  'tis  the  sense 
Of  majesty,  and  beauty,  and  repose, 
A  blended  holiness  of  earth  and  sky. 
Something  that  makes  this  individual  spot. 
This  small  abiding-place  of  many  men, 
A  termination,  and  a  last  retreat, 
A  center,  come  from  wheresoe'er  you  will, 
A  whole  without  dependence  or  defect, 
Made  for  itself,  and  happy  in  itself, 
Perfect  contentment.  Unity  entire. 

And  as  these  lofty  barriers  break  the  force 
Of  winds, — this  deep  Vale,  as  it  doth  in  part 
Conceal  us  from  the  storm,  so  here  abides 
A  power  and  a  protection  for  the  mind. 

Here,  not  as  a  world-weary  neurotic  or  an  effeminate  beauty  lover, 
but  as  a  virile  and  epic  poet,  he  gives  up  the  martial  themes  which 
he  apparently  had  cherished,  to  write  on  themes  which  he  recognizes 
as  utterly  unlike  "Paradise  Lost,"  but  which  he  considers  equally 
Miltonic. 

Then  farewell  to  the  Warrior's  Schemes,  farewell 
The  forwardness  of  soul  which  looks  that  way 
Upon  a  less  incitement  than  the  Cause 
Of  Liberty  endangered,  and  farewell 
That  other  hope,  long  mine,  the  hope  to  fill 
The  heroic  trumpet  with  the  Muse's  breath! 
Yet  in  this  peaceful  Vale  we  will  not  spend 
Unheard-of  days,  though  loving  peaceful  thought, 
A  voice  shall  speak,  and  what  will  be  the  theme? 

[  los  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

Urania,  I  shall  need 
Thy  guidance,  or  a  greater  Muse,  if  such 
Descend  to  earth  or  dwell  in  highest  heaven  I 
For  I  must  tread  on  shadowy  ground,  must  sink 
Deep — and,  aloft  ascending,  breathe  in  worlds 
To  which  the  heaven  of  heavens  is  but  a  veil. 
All  strength, — all  terror,  single  or  in  bands. 
That  ever  was  put  forth  in  personal  form — 
Jehovah — with  his  thunder,  and  the  choir 
Of  shouting  Angels,  and  the  empyreal  thrones — 
I  pass  them  unalarmed.    Not  Chaos,  not 
The  darkest  pit  of  lowest  Erebus, 
Nor  aught  of  blinder  vacancy,  scooped  out 
By  help  of  dreams — can  breed  such  fear  and  awe 
As  fall  upon  us  often  when  we  look 
Into  our  Minds,  into  the  Mind  of  Man — 
My  haunt,  and  the  main  region  of  my  song. 

Paradise,  and  groves 
Elysian,  Fortunate  Fields — like  those  of  old 
Sought  in  the  Atlantic  Main — why  should  they  be 
A  history  only  of  departed  things. 
Or  a  mere  fiction  of  what  never  was? 
For  the  discerning  intellect  of  Man, 
When  wedded  to  this  goodly  universe 
In  love  and  holy  passion,  shall  find  these 
A  simple  produce  of  the  common  day. 

It  was  the  tragedy  of  Wordsworth's  career  that  the  physical  element 
in  poetical  inspiration,  the  instinctive  lyric  stirring  of  the  bird  in 
its  mating  time,  burned  out  in  him  early,  while  in  Milton  it  endured 
late.  This  makes  it  harder  to  feel  in  the  poems  the  likeness  which 
there  unquestionably  was  in  the  poets.  Wordsworth  also  was  experi- 
menting in  a  new  field,  while  Milton  was  following  great  models 
in  an  old  one;  and  experiment  is  more  favorable  to  knowledge  than 
to  art.  Yet  it  is  unquestionable  that  in  "The  Excursion"  and  the 
unfinished  ''Recluse"  Wordsworth  was  trying  to  write  a  modern 
"Paradise  Regained,"  in  which  Nature  was  the  Saviour,  a  morbid 

[  io6  ] 


POETS  AND  AUTHORS  OF  THE  LAKES 

attitude  toward  life  was  the  defeated  fiend,  and  Grasmere  was 
Holy  Land. 

Such  were  the  high  hopes  with  which  Wordsworth  came  to  the 
Lakes.  All  previous  experiences,  including  the  passing  "experiment" 
of  the  Stowey  poems,  were  mere  preliminary  incidents  in  his  eyes. 
Did  he  realize  his  dream?  Unquestionably  he  wrote  much  great 
poetry  there,  the  bulk  of  that  by  which  he  will  endure.  Unquestion- 
ably most  of  this  poetry  took  on  the  color  of  his  environment.  Yet 
nearly  all  which  was  best  was  written  in  the  first  seven  years,  and 
after  that  for  four  decades,  in  the  midst  of  the  scenes  which  he  had 
believed  so  inspiring,  he  gradually  withered  as  poet  and  man.  Such 
a  life  of  retirement  is  admirably  calculated  to  ripen  thought  already 
sown,  but  not  to  sow  new  seed,  which  fall  thickest  in  the  concourses 
of  men.  He  reaped  a  plentiful  first  harvest,  and  after  that  for  half 
a  lifetime  gleaned  a  barren  field.  During  a  few  years,  however,  the 
greatest  poet  of  his  age  found  his  greatest  inspiration  in  the  peaks 
and  lakes  and  flowers  around  his  home.  After  the  Stowey  "ballads" 
and  even  the  "Lucy"  lyrics  of  his  German  visit,  the  poems  of  his 
first  year  at  Grasmere  surround  one  at  once  with  a  more  localized 
northern  atmosphere.  Two  of  them  are  among  his  best,  "The 
Brothers"  and  "Michael."  In  the  first  a  former  Lake  resident, 
coming  back  like  the  poet  himself,  once  more 

Saw  mountains;  saw  the  forms  of  sheep  that  grazed 
On  verdant  hills — ^with  dwellings  among  trees, 
And  shepherds  clad  in  the  same  country  gray 
Which  he  himself  had  worn. 

Here  we  are  no  more  among  the  peasants  of  Somerset,  the  Simon 
Lees  thankful  for  any  aid,  the  "man  fullgrown"  sobbing  as  he  sells 
his  last  lamb  when  the  parish  refuses  to  help  him.  Instead  here  in 
the  north 

Year  after  year  the  old  man  still  kept  up 
A  cheerful  mind, — and  buffeted  with  bond. 
Interest,  and  mortgages;  at  last  he  sank. 
And  went  into  his  grave  before  his  time. 
[  107  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

These  are  the  indomitable  poor  whom  Wordsworth  referred  to  in  a 
letter  as  "now  almost  confined  to  the  north  of  England." 

Wordsworth  as  Wordsworth  had  many  sides  and  sounded  many 
keys.  As  the  poet  of  Grasmere  he  is  less  complex.  In  the  verse  com- 
posed there  the  purely  lyric  note  appears  more  rarely  than  in  the 
products  of  Stowey,  of  Germany,  and  of  the  Highland  tours.  The 
poems  tinged  with  medievalism  between  1800  and  1814  are  mostly 
evoked  by  other  localities.  "Hart-Leap  Well,"  though  written  at 
Grasmere,  was  inspired  by  a  Yorkshire  scene  passed  in  a  recent 
trip.  A  Scotch  tour  called  out  the  address  to  the  ruins  of  Kilchurn 
castle, 

The  pride,  the  fury  uncontrollable, 

Lost  on  the  aerial  heights  of  the  Crusades. 

"The  Song  at  the  Feast  of  Brougham  Castle"  was  composed  at 
Coleorton  in  Leicestershire.  The  first  half  of  "The  White  Doe,"  the 
part  most  tinged  with  medieval  color,  was  written  at  Stockton-upon- 
Tees  in  Durhamshire,  the  birthplace  of  the  antiquary  Ritson.  We 
are  by  no  means  sure  that  the  quiet  home  encouraged  the  best 
political  verse.  His  most  noble  sonnets  on  national  questions  were 
mainly  written  during  or  just  after  the  trip  to  London  in  1802  and 
the  Scotch  tour  of  1803.  Thoughts  of  a  "Briton  on  the  Subjugation 
of  Switzerland"  was  composed  at  Coleorton.  On  the  contrary,  by 
Grasmere  lake  the  poet  says: 

Be  thankful,  thou;  for,  if  unholy  deeds 
Ravage  the  world,  tranquility  is  here. 

The  effect  of  the  Westmoreland  environment  shows  itself  often 
in  a  vein  of  poetical  but  homely  realism  like  that  of  Cowper  and 
Burns,  as  in  the  poems  on  the  daisy  and  the  celandine.  This  is  a 
study  of  the  beautiful  in  the  commonplace,  and  an  almost  aggressive 
reaction  at  times  against  the  age's  love  of  remote  countries  and 
centuries.  At  times  the  stern  contour  of  the  landscape  and  high  spirit 
of  the  people,  produce  a  very  different  vein,  bare  and  dignified  as 
the  mountain  tops  themselves.  This  quality  becomes  epic  in 
"Michael,"  and  in  "The  Affliction  of  Margaret"  shows  how  dignified 
realism  can  replace  the  peculiar  spell  of  the  supernatural. 

[  108  ] 


POETS  AND  AUTHORS  OF  THE  LAKES 

I  look  for  ghosts;  but  none  will  force 
Their  way  to  me:  'tis  falsely  said 
That  there  was  ever  intercourse 
Between  the  living  and  the  dead.  .  .  . 
My  apprehensions  come  in  crowds; 
I  dread  the  rustling  of  the  grass; 
The  very  shadows  of  the  clouds 
Have  power  to  shake  me  as  they  pass. 

These  words  might  be  a  photograph  of  life,  and  yet  suggest  the 
unseen  better  than  all  the  unearthly  wonders  of  "Kehama."  Or 
again  the  retired  life  of  "The  Recluse"  encourages  an  old  tendency 
toward  mystic  philosophy,  which  appears  in  only  a  few  poems,  but 
those  among  the  author's  best, 

High  instincts  before  which  our  mortal  nature 
Did  tremble  like  a  guilty  thing  surprised, 

and  visionary  moods  in  which  an  old  leech-gatherer 

did  seem 
Like  one  whom  I  had  met  with  in  a  dream. 

The  pentameter  line,  in  blank  verse,  sonnet,  couplet,  or  stanza,  is 
used  more  consistently  for  the  Grasmere  poems  than  for  those 
written  in  Scotland,  Somerset,  Germany,  or  anywhere  else  outside 
of  the  Lakes.  This  fact  is  probably  an  index  of  a  more  grave  and 
meditative  mood  under  Helvellyn  and  Scafell,  more  stagnant  when 
uninspired,  more  Hebraic  under  inspiration,  the  mood  which  De 
Quincey  found  in  the  poet's  eyes  following  a  tramp  among  the  hills. 
"After  a  long  day's  toil  in  walking,  I  have  seen  them  assume  an 
appearance  the  most  solemn  and  spiritual  that  it  is  possible  for  the 
human  eye  to  wear.  ...  It  is  a  light  that  seems  to  come  from 
depths  below  all  depths."  "One  might  imagine  Ezekiel  or  Isaiah 
to  have  had  such  eyes,"  said  Leigh  Hunt. 

Of  the  two  most  lengthy  poems  composed  among  the  Lakes,  "The 
Prelude"  inevitably  contains  much  which  might  have  been  written 
anywhere;  but  that  "The  Excursion"  was  the  direct  child  of  its 
environment  was  long  ago  pointed  out  by  Lamb.  "The  dialogue 

[  109  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

throughout  is  carried  on  in  the  very  heart  of  the  most  romantic 
scenery  which  the  poet's  native  hills  could  supply;  and  which,  by 
the  perpetual  references  made  to  it  either  in  the  way  of  illustration 
or  for  variety  and  pleasurable  description's  sake,  is  brought  before 
us  as  we  read.  We  breathe  in  the  fresh  air,  as  we  do  while  reading 
Walton's  Complete  Angler;  only  the  country  about  us  is  as  much 
bolder  than  Walton's,  as  the  thoughts  and  speculations,  which  form 
the  matter  of  the  poem,  exceed  the  trifling  pastime  and  low-pitched 
conversation  of  his  humble  fishermen."  ^'It  is,"  according  to  Pro- 
fessor Harper,  "pre-eminently  the  poem  of  the  Lake  country,  and 
in  no  other  work  of  Wordsworth  or  anyone  else  has  the  life  of 
a  particular  ^nook  of  English  ground'  been  portrayed  with  more 
distinctness  and  poetic  truth.  There  are  dozens  of  passages  the  full 
force  of  which  can  be  felt  only  by  one  who  has  lived  in  the  vales 
and  known  some  of  their  inhabitants  of  the  old  stock."  One  of  the 
defects  in  "The  Excursion"  is  that  it  is  too  full  of  local  flavor,  so 
that  the  fragments  written  long  before  south  of  Bristol  do  not  har- 
monize with  those  composed  north  of  Windermere.  Also,  as  Vergil's 
voice  is  said  to  have  made  commonplace  poetry  appear  noble,  so 
the  grandeur  of  Wordsworth's  environment  made  trifling  matters 
appear  epic,  with  disastrous  results  on  the  poem,  for  when  it  is 
read  apart  from  that  extrinsic  magic  of  environment  it  often  proves 
flat  as  a  libretto  without  the  music. 

It  was  Wordsworth's  ambition  to  be  a  pastoral  and  meditative 
l^ilton.  The  disjecta  membra  of  his  bold  plan  are  scattered  through 
his  works,  now  sublime,  now  jarring,  now  gravely  unreadable.  There 
was  a  hopeless  contradiction  in  the  basic  plan;  for  epic  poetry  im- 
plies incident,  and  he  was  trying  to  write  an  epic  poem  glorifying 
eventless  lives.  Was  there  also  a  mistake  in  the  form  of  life  that  he 
chose  for  himself,  a  life  so  one-sided,  so  isolated  compared  with 
that  of  Scott  or  Goethe,  men  who  improved  during  the  later  years 
when  he  was  barren?  Probably  not,  for  the  eight  or  nine  years  of  his 
great  period  have  left  more  enduring  work  than  the  thirty  of  Scott. 
Every  plant  grows  best  according  to  the  laws  of  its  own  being.  Yet 
a  life  for  many  years  amid  much  beautiful  scenery  but  without 
daily  attrition  against  new  minds,  a  life,  moreover,  without  the  calm 

[  no] 


POETS  AND  AUTHORS  OF  THE  LAKES 

staying  power  of  a  regular  calling,  leaves  little  middle  ground 
between  inspiration  and  stagnation.  When  one  went  the  other  came. 
The  great  poet,  says  Professor  Harper,  reached  his  fortieth  year 
and  passed  it,  "with  no  quickening  of  soul,  no  renewal  of  youth, 
no  broadening  of  sympathies,  no  acquisition  of  fresh  intellectual 
interests."  At  forty-two  he  told  a  friend  that  he  had  no  objection 
to  leaving  the  Lake  region,  which  twelve  years  earlier  he  had  sought 
as  poetry's  hallowed  ground.  He  himself  believed  his  premature 
decline  due  to  anxiety  about  his  country's  fate;  Professor  Harper 
ascribes  it  to  the  passionate  intensity  of  his  nature;  yet  Dante  under 
both  of  these  burdens  wrote  the  world's  grandest  poem  in  middle 
age.  All  that  is  most  noble  and  genuine  in  Wordsworth's  poetry 
takes  on  new  beauty  when  associated  with  the  landscapes  which 
evoked  it,  without  which  it  might  never  have  been;  yet  some  may 
have  passing  regrets  too  as  they  gaze  on  the  beautiful  region  where 
the  greatest  poet  of  his  time  blossomed — and  withered. 


[  III  ] 


CHAPTER  V 

The  Popular  Supremacy  of  Scott,  1805-1812 

In  1804  the  poet  Bowles  wrote  of  the  period  as  "a  time  so  unfavor- 
able to  long  poems."  The  following  January,  Scott^s  "Lay  of  the 
Last  Minstrel"  was  published;  and  over  27,000  copies  of  it  were 
printed  in  the  next  seven  years,  nearly  44,000  copies  before  1830. 
Nor  was  it  merely  a  best  seller  and  eyed  askance  by  the  discerning, 
like  Bloomfield's  "Farmer's  Boy";  it  was  on  the  table  of  the  poetical 
and  scholarly  everywhere. 

Considered  from  within,  as  a  history  of  the  poet's  mind  and  daily 
life,  the  development  of  Scott's  genius  was  peculiarly  logical  and 
unbroken;  from  folk  ballad  to  original  ballad,  from  this  to  ballad 
narrative.  Considered  from  without,  however,  from  the  viewpoint 
of  the  reading  public,  there  was  a  marked  difference  between  Scott 
before  1805  and  after  that  date.  The  early  German  publications  had 
been  so  completely  forgotten  that  Monk  Lewis  reprinted  them  sup- 
posing his  edition  the  first.  ''The  Minstrelsy"  had  sold  well  among 
scholars  and  Scotchmen,  moderately  elsewhere.  ''The  work  did  not 
perhaps  attract  much  notice  beyond  the  more  cultivated  students 
of  literature,"  says  Lockhart,  "until  the  Editor's  own  genius  blazed 
out  in  full  splendor  in  the  Lay."  Even  the  moderate  amount  of  suc- 
cess which  the  collection  enjoyed  did  not  necessarily  argue  popu- 
larity for  original  verse  by  the  compiler.  Southey's  "Amadis"  and 
other  Spanish  adaptations  apparently  had  about  the  same  success 
as  "The  Minstrelsy";  but  his  own  narrative  poems  were  read  by 
scores  where  the  "Lay"  was  read  by  thousands.  In  1804  Scott  for 
the  general  reader  was  hardly  a  name;  in  1805  he  was  a  blazing 
meteor  on  the  literary  horizon.  Rogers  and  Campbell  had  each  won 
a  single  great  popular  triumph,  but  had  been  unable  to  follow  it  up. 

[  112  ] 


THE  POPULAR  SUPREMACY  OF  SCOTT 

Scott,  like  Napoleon,  passed  from  one  popular  victory  to  another. 
"Marmion"  and  "The  Lady  of  the  Lake"  found  an  even  better 
reception  than  the  "Lay,"  and  though  "Rokeby"  (1813)  deservedly 
got  more  unfavorable  criticism,  there  was  no  marked  falling  off  in 
the  sales.  By  this  time,  however,  Byron  was  in  the  field;  and  Scott's 
poetical  vein  was  worked  out.  His  "Lord  of  the  Isles"  (181 5)  found 
fewer  readers;  and  the  popular  reign  of  Scott  in  poetry  was  over. 

While  it  lasted  it  was  a  reign  indeed.  People  did  not  merely 
peruse  his  work,  they  took  fire  from  it.  "You  know,"  Mrs.  Words- 
worth told  her  husband  in  1813,  "that  Mr.  Scott's  verses  are  the 
delight  of  the  times,  and  that  thousands  can  repeat  scores  of  pages." 
His  description  of  the  battle  of  BeaP  an  Duine  encouraged  the 
soldiers  in  the  trenches  of  Torres  Vedras.  His  noble  character  and 
affable  address  made  him  friends  in  all  ranks.  So  great  and  so  unfail- 
ing was  his  success  that  we  are  accustomed  to  think  of  this  decade 
as  an  age  of  poetry  readers,  in  marked  contrast  to  the  one  just  gone. 
This,  however,  was  not  the  case,  and  the  general  literary  market  was 
very  much  like  that  of  1910  if  we  may  trust  Southey.  In  1808, 
the  year  of  "Marmion,"  he  wrote  to  Ebenezer  Elliott:  "Poetry  is 
the  worst  article  in  the  market; — out  of  fifty  volumes  which  may 
be  published  in  the  course  of  a  year,  not  five  pay  the  expense  of 
publication:  and  this  is  a  piece  of  knowledge  which  authors  in 
general  purchase  dearly,  for  in  most  cases  these  volumes  are  printed 
at  their  risk."  With  all  due  allowance  for  Southey's  wish  to  dis- 
courage an  immature  poet,  we  must  remember  that  he  was  a  pro- 
fessional reviewer,  and  knew  whereof  he  spoke.  In  1807  Constable 
paid  a  thousand  guineas  for  "Marmion"  without  having  seen  a 
line  of  it;  and  Murray,  to  whom  he  had  conceded  part  of  the  prize, 
wrote  to  him:  "We  both  view  it  as  honorable,  profitable,  and 
glorious  to  be  concerned  in  the  publication  of  a  new  poem  by  Walter 
Scott."  The  next  year,  as  Dorothy  Wordsworth  tells  us,  Longman, 
who  had  vainly  tried  to  get  "Marmion,"  grudgingly  consented  to 
publish  "The  White  Doe  of  Rylstone."  "Longman  has  consented, 
in  spite  of  the  odium  under  which  my  brother  labors  as  a  poet,  to 
give  him  one  hundred  guineas  per  tiiousand  copies,  according  to 

I  113  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

the  demand.'''^  The  poem  remained  unprinted  and  under  revision  for 
seven  years.  None  of  Jane  Austen's  novels  found  a  publisher  before 
1811,  although  three  of  the  best  of  them  were  written  earlier  than 
"The  Minstrelsy."  During  Scott's  reign  up  to  181 2  the  only  other 
poets  to  gain  a  firm  hold  on  the  public  were  Moore,  Campbell,  and 
Crabbe.  His  triumph  was  an  index  less  of  the  age  than  of  the 
author;  and  whatever  we  may  think  of  his  permanent  rank  we  must 
grant  him  the  power  of  contemporary  appeal. 

Personally  we  believe  that  his  success  was  deserved.  He  may 
occasionally  have  truckled  to  the  public  with  a  little  manufactured 
sentimentalism  or  magic;  but  in  the  main  the  qualities  which  made 
him  known  are  the  virtues  by  which  he  endures.  He  was  popular 
partly  because  he  kept  his  finger  on  the  pulse  of  his  audience;  but 
he  did  this,  not  through  sordid  commercialism,  merely  through  a 
gentleman's  desire  to  please.  He  would  no  more  force  an  unwelcome 
stanza  on  his  readers  than  he  would  force  an  unwelcome  wine  on  his 
guest  at  dinner.  For  the  same  reason  he  wished  to  offend  nobody's 
literary  theories,  and  made  friends  with  the  old  and  the  new  school 
alike.  He  admired  Pope  and  Ariosto  both.  He  edited  impartially  the 
medieval  "Sir  Tristrem,"  and  the  works  of  Swift.  His  defence  of 
what  was  new  in  his  own  verse,  as  given  in  the  introductory  epistles 
of  "Marmion,"  is  as  diplomatic  and  ingratiating  as  the  Prefaces  of 
Wordsworth  were  tactless  and  blundering. 

Cease  then,  my  friend!  a  moment  cease. 
And  leave  these  classic  tomes  in  peace! 
Of  Roman  and  of  Grecian  lore 
Sure  mortal  brain  can  hold  no  more. 
These  ancients,  as  Noll  Bluff  might  say, 
"Were  pretty  fellows  in  their  day," 
But  time  and  tide  o'er  all  prevail — 
On  Christmas  eve  a  Christmas  tale — 
Of  wonder  and  of  war — "Profane! 
What!  leave  the  lofty  Latian  strain. 
Her  stately  prose,  her  verse's  charms. 
To  hear  the  clash  of  rusty  arms; 


♦Italics  ours. 


[  114] 


THE  POPULAR  SUPREMACY  OF  SCOTT 

In  Fairy-land  or  Limbo  lost, 
To  jostle  conjurer  and  ghost, 
Goblin  and  witch!" — Nay,  Heber  dear. 
Before  you  touch  my  charter,  hear. 

This  is  good  poetry  largely  because  it  is  the  poetry  of  a  perfect 
gentleman. 

Scott  was  popular  because  of  his  novelty,  but  wherein  did  that 
novelty  consist  ?  Not  in  a  return  to  the  Middle  Ages,  for  Home  and 
Beattie  among  his  countrymen,  and  Warton  and  Chatterton  and 
half  a  dozen  novelists  among  the  English  had  already  been  there. 
Southey's  "Madoc,"  published  in  the  same  year  as  ^'The  Lay,''  was 
more  medieval  in  date,  and  yet  did  not  sell.  Scott's  work  was  new 
because  it  introduced  genuineness  and  humanity  into  a  field  where 
they  had  before  been  lacking,  because  he  gave  a  vivid  picture  of 
the  life  of  a  bygone  people  instead  of  negative  scholarship  and 
colorless  literary  conventions.  His  popular  contemporaries  in  Ger- 
many, Uhland  and  Fouque,  like  our  own  Longfellow,  appealed  to  the 
love  of  a  picturesquely  conventional  antiquity,  and  their  once  great 
vogue  has  gone  the  way  of  all  things  built  on  convention.  Uhland's 
knights,  in  the  biting  words  of  Heine,  were  "leaden  armor,  stuffed 
with  flowers."  Brandes's  comment  on  "The  Magic  Ring"  is  equally 
caustic  and  true:  "The  horses  are  the  only  creatures  in  the  book 
whose  psychology  Fouque  has  successfully  mastered."  It  was  a  far 
cry  from  such  literature  to  Scott's  picture  of  Watt  Tinlinn,  or 
William  of  Deloraine,  that  "stout,  moss-trooping  Scot,"  or  the 
picture  of  King  James's  army  given  in  Canto  V  of  "Marmion,"  or 
the  guardroom  scene  in  "The  Lady  of  the  Lake."  His  popular  appeal 
was  legitimate  and  noble,  the  appeal  which  always  goes  with  a 
genuine,  sympathizing,  and  not  too  inaccurate  picture  of  life. 

Scott  was  popular  because  of  his  virility.  It  is  this  very  quality 
that  has  made  him  underrated  by  the  neurotic  tendency  in  late 
nineteenth-century  criticism,  which  would  leave  his  poetry  to  boys 
because  it  is  too  healthy  for  men  of  the  world.  This  quality  in  his 
own  day  increased  a  poetical  vogue  which  began  in  the  year  of 
Austerlitz,  decreased  after  Leipsic,  and  fell  off  markedly  after 
Waterloo.  The  manly  element  in  Wordsworth  was  precisely  what 

[  "5  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

the  public  did  not  see;  but  in  Scott  it  leaned  out  from  every  page, 
and  cried  to  the  families  of  those  embattled  against  Napoleon: 

Where's  the  coward  that  would  not  dare 
To  fight  for  such  a  land! 

Scott  was  popular  because  he  was  a  good  story-teller.  Could  any 
man  have  a  better  claim  on  the  enthusiasm  of  his  audience?  If  the 
vision  of  Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  Blake,  and  Shelley  was  higher, 
that  of  Scott  was  clearer;  if  he  was  less  of  an  artist  in  cadences  he 
was  more  of  an  artist  in  incidents;  and  it  was  partly  by  his  art  that 
he  held  his  public. 

There  is  general  agreement  as  to  the  qualities  of  his  verse  and 
general  disagreement  as  to  its  merit.  All  admit  his  vigor,  his  whole- 
someness,  his  wealth  of  antiquarian  color.  All  recognize  his  lack 
of  delicate  undertones  in  rhythm,  character,  and  suggestive  word. 
Something  might  be  said  for  the  epic  force  of  his  openings,  which 
come  much  nearer  the  dignity  of  Homer  than  his  rather  trailing 
conclusions;  something  for  the  sweep  and  vigor  of  his  battle  scenes, 
unequaled  in  their  kind  among  modern  English  poets.  Still  the 
fluctuations  of  his  reputation  can  no  longer  be  influenced  by  dis- 
coveries of  critics  where  all  lies  on  the  surface,  but  must  be  left 
to  changing  taste.  This  much,  however,  can  certainly  be  said  for 
him:  he  combined  a  high  degree  of  merit  with  a  wide  popular  appeal 
better  than  any  other  poet  between  Dryden  and  Tennyson.  Byron 
wrote  worse  poetry  which  had  a  greater  vogue  and  better  poetry 
which  was  less  recognized,  but  could  not  ride  so  well  the  literary 
and  the  lucrative  Pegasus  at  once.  For  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  no 
other  man  forced  so  many  of  his  contemporaries  to  read  poetry  that 
was  at  least  reasonably  poetical.  Such  an  achievement  may  be  a 
triumph  in  the  realm  of  pedagogy  more  than  in  that  of  art;  such  a 
man  may  be  rather  a  great  amuser  or  literary  leader  than  a  great 
poet — we  will  not  quarrel  about  words — the  man  was  great  and  the 
achievement  no  less  so.  No  ossified  Hayleys,  no  lacrymose  Charlotte 
Smiths,  no  crude  purveyors  of  German  melodrama  fattened  during 
his  reign.  He  drew  the  masses  of  England  up  with  him  to  his  plateau, 
while  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge  soared  lonely  to  the  mountain 

[  ii6] 


THE  POPULAR  SUPREMACY  OF  SCOTT 

peak.  There  is  an  instinct  toward  popularity  which  comes  from 
vanity  or  greed,  and  that  is  destructive  to  Hterature.  There  is 
another  instinct  toward  popularity  which  arises  from  sympathy 
and  a  desire  for  public  service.  That  was  the  attitude  of  Scott,  and 
at  bottom,  while  it  may  not  conduce  to  the  most  perfect  art,  it  was 
no  ignoble  mood  and  could  result  in  nothing  but  benefit  to  man- 
kind. Even  if  it  chained  Scott's  poetry  to  the  earth,  it  gave  him  also 
the  vigor  of  the  soil.  The  epic  element  may  be  far  inferior  to 
Homer's,  but  it  is  there.  The  lyrics  may  fly  nearer  to  the  ground 
than  Shelley's,  but  they  fly  on  a  sure  wing.  Nothing  could  be  more 
untrue  than  the  charge  made  by  Byron  in  "English  Bards"  that 
Scott  had  sold  his  literary  conscience  for  gain.  The  direct  road  to 
the  highest  literary  development  of  which  he  was  capable  lay 
through  popular  applause;  and  the  relative  merits  of  his  various 
works  are  in  almost  exact  proportion  to  the  welcome  given  them  by 
his  age. 

And  what  was  happening  elsewhere  in  the  world  of  letters  during 
Scott's  monarchy?  We  can  hardly  say  that  his  triumph  meant 
popular  injustice  to  others,  for,  with  the  exception  of  Wordsworth, 
the  great  unpopular  writers  during  this  period  were  noticeably 
barren.  Between  1805  and  181 2  Coleridge  wrote  not  a  single  poem 
of  distinction,  the  little  good  work  that  he  did  in  the  Lakes  having 
been  composed  earlier.  Southey  was  beginning  "Roderick"  and 
finishing  "The  Curse  of  Kehama,"  which  found  as  much  favor  as 
it  deserved.  Blake,  who  had  earlier  uttered  some  great,  though  none 
too  lucid,  lyrical  outbursts,  was  sinking  deeper  and  deeper  into  the 
abyss  of  unintelligibility,  where  occasional  lines  of  inspiration 
glimmered  like  a  miner's  lamp.  Jane  Austen  was  not  publishing,  and 
apparently  was  doing  little  writing  except  that  of  revision.  Both 
she  and  Blake  were  non-existent  at  this  time  in  the  eyes  of  the 
literary  world.  Even  the  inferior  but  more  popular  Rogers  was  in- 
dulging in  the  most  unproductive  period  of  his  career.  With  Words- 
worth the  case  was  different.  He  always  has  been  and  always  will 
be  the  poet  of  a  few;  yet  a  comparison  of  his  success  during  these 
years  with  that  of  Scott  is  a  study  in  the  irony  of  history.  He  was 
in  the  prime  and  glory  of  his  creative  powers;  he  was,  and  probably 

[  117  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

felt  that  he  was,  the  greatest  poet  of  the  age;  he  was  writing  of 
rural  scenery  when  the  praise  of  it  was  a  literary  fad,  so  much  so 
that  Miss  Mitford  deplored  "the  prevailing  cant  upon  those  sub- 
jects." Yet  the  discerning  criticised  and  the  reading  public  ignored 
him.  His  fellow  poet  Southey  called  his  great  ode  on  immortality 
"a  dark  subject  darkly  handled";  and  Jeffrey,  discussing  the  1807 
volume,  declared  the  ode  "the  most  illegible  and  unintelligible  part 
of  the  publication."  Reviewing  the  same  volume,  Byron,  then  a 
mere  boy,  expressed  what  appears  to  have  been  the  common 
opinion  of  those  who  knew  Wordsworth  at  all:  "We  think  these 
volumes  display  a  genius  worthy  of  higher  pursuits,  and  regret  that 
Mr.  W.  confines  his  muse  to  such  trifling  subjects.  .  .  .  Many,  with 
inferior  abilities,  have  acquired  a  loftier  seat  on  Parnassus."  Another 
stumbling-block  to  Wordsworth's  popularity,  wholly  different  from 
his  "trifling  subjects,"  is  indicated  by  Byron  some  years  later:  "His 
performances  since  Xyrical  Ballads'  are  miserably  inadequate  to 
the  ability  which  lurks  within  him.  .  .  .  Who  can  understand 
him?  .  .  .  Jacob  Behmen  [Boehme],  Swedenborg,  and  Joanna 
Southcote,  are  mere  types  of  this  arch-apostle  of  mystery  and 
mysticism."  Wordsworth  in  1813,  when  the  bulk  of  his  best  work 
had  been  before  the  public  for  some  years,  declared:  "My  literary 
employments  bring  me  no  emoluments,  nor  promise  any."  In  this 
year  Scott  was  preparing  to  build  Abbotsford  on  the  profits  from 
his  verse. 

Between  "The  Lay"  and  "Marmion"  and  in  the  same  year  with 
Moore's  "Melodies"  and  Crabbe's  "Parish  Register,"  Wordsworth 
published  a  large  amount  of  his  noblest  poetry.  Much  of  this,  how- 
ever, had  been  written  some  time  before.  To  his  public  he  seemed 
an  eager  but  unsuccessful  competitor  with  the  popular  favorites. 
One  who  follows  the  inner  life  of  the  poet  finds  in  him  also,  as  in 
Southey,  Coleridge,  Blake,  and  Austen,  a  comparatively  barren 
period,  as  if  his  star  paled  too  under  the  blaze  of  the  northern 
meteor.  This  fact  is  best  shown  by  a  comparison  of  Wordsworth's 
poetical  achievement  during  the  eight  years  179 7- 1804  with  that 
during  the  eight  following,  1805-1 81 2,  the  period  of  Scott's  unchal- 
lenged leadership.  "The  Excursion"  belongs  partly  to  both  periods, 

[  118  ] 


THE  POPULAR  SUPREMACY  OF  SCOTT 

partly  to  a  time  following  1812,  and  should  weigh  but  little  in  the 
balance.  Aside  from  this,  and  with  "The  Prelude"  given  its  right 
niche  in  the  earlier  period,  Wordsworth  produced  nearly  three  times 
as  much  poetry  during  the  eight  years  before  1805  as  during  the 
eight  years  following.  Moreover,  the  greatest  poem  of  the  1807 
volume,  the  ode  on  immortality,  though  finished  in  that  year,  was 
begun  "two  years  at  least"  earlier.  Also  during  this  time  Words- 
worth in  a  number  of  poems  showed  the  influence  of  Scott  much 
more  than  either  before  or  after.  In  metre  and  occasionally  in 
medieval  color  the  greater  poet  imitated  the  reigning  favorite;  in 
thought  and  purpose  he  reacted  to  the  opposite  extreme,  empha- 
sizing the  triumph  of  man  over  himself,  not  the  external  battle  or 
adventure.  Wordsworth  and  Scott  at  this  time  were  acquaintances, 
with  much  admiration  for  each  other  as  men,  but  wilii  none  too 
much  sympathy  in  literary  taste. 

Scott  may  have  increased  the  enthusiasm  of  Wordsworth  before 
the  picture  of  Peele  Castle, 

Cased  in  the  unfeeling  armor  of  old  time; 

or  may  have  suggested  in  the  humbly  reahstic  "Waggoner"  the 
allusion  to 

that  pile  of  stones 

Heaped  over  brave  King  Dunmail's  bones; 

His  who  had  once  supreme  command, 

Last  king  of  rocky  Cumberland. 

The  influence  appears  unquestionably  in  "The  Horn  of  Egremont 
Castle,"  and  "The  Song  at  the  Feast  of  Brougham  Castle,"  both 
founded  on  ancient  Cumberland  legends.  In  the  latter  the  medieval 
minstrel  gives  the  attitude  of  Scott  in  martial  octosyllabics,  and 
Wordsworth  utters  his  own  view  in  musing  pentameters.  In  a  prose 
comment  the  author  "cannot  conclude  this  note  without  adding  a 
word  upon  the  subject  of  those  numerous  and  noble  feudal  Edifices, 
spoken  of  in  the  Poem,  the  ruins  of  some  of  which  are,  at  this  day, 
so  great  an  ornament  to  that  interesting  country."  The  trail  of 
antiquity  is  found  most  at  length  in  "The  White  Doe  of  Rylstone," 
which  inculcates  a  moral  the  opposite  of  Scott's,  but  in  metre  and 

[  119  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

descriptive  passages  is  often  reminiscent  of  him.  Here,  as  in  the 
"Lay/'  generations  of  fierce  armored  barons  "are  buried  upright" 
or  "uncoffined  lie";  and  among  the  leaders 

An  aged  knight,  to  danger  steeled 

wears  the  helmet  on  his  white  locks.  The  fourth  canto  opens  with 
a  marked  verbal  likeness  to  the  beginning  of  "Rokeby,"  which  was 
written  after  "The  White  Doe"  but  published  before  it: 

'Tis  night:  in  silence  looking  down, 
The  Moon,  from  cloudless  ether,  sees 
A  Camp,  and  a  beleaguered  Town, 
And  Castle,  like  a  stately  crown 
On  the  steep  rocks  of  winding  Tees. 

Whether  or  not  the  relative  barrenness  of  so  many  gifted  contem- 
poraries was  increased  by  Scott's  glory,  no  one  can  say.  In  each 
case,  other  causes  could  easily  be  pointed  out.  Nevertheless  the 
great  unpopular  poetry  of  the  age  divides  mainly  into  two  waves: 
that  of  Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  and  Blake  before  1805;  that  of 
Keats  and  Shelley  after  Byron's  great  vogue  had  begun  to  decline. 
From  1805  to  181 8  while  Scott  and  Byron  in  turn  played 

The  grand  Napoleon  of  the  realms  of  rhyme, 

posterity  will  find  more  good  verse  among  the  favorites  of  their 
age  than  among  the  great  ignored.  Nor  can  we  avoid  feeling  a  note 
of  bitterness  in  one  of  Wordsworth's  letters  of  181 2,  when  Scott 
was  at  his  height  and  Byron  was  about  to  rise  higher  still:  "I  had 
erroneously  calculated  upon  the  degree  in  which  my  writings  were 
likely  to  suit  the  taste  of  the  times."  After  all,  every  poet  seeks  in 
popular  approval  something  nobler  than  applause,  the  confirmation 
of  his  own  faith  in  his  vision.  If  he  fails  to  get  that,  however 
defiantly  he  may  talk,  there  is  danger  that  his  faith  in  himself  may 
waver;  or,  if  he  is  too  self-assured  for  this,  he  may  lose  faith  in 
his  power  to  make  men  understand  him,  a  form  of  self-distrust  as 
withering  poetically  as  the  other. 

It  is  time  to  consider  some  lesser  figures  among  the  favorites. 
During  the  reign  of  Scott  there  were  three  poets  who  were  inferior 

[  120  ] 


THE  POPULAR  SUPREMACY  OF  SCOTT 

to  him  in  merit  and  popular  appeal,  but  who  approached  him  in 
both.  In  1807  Tom  Moore,  that  ^'abridgement  of  all  that  is  pleasant- 
in  man,"  began  his  long  series  of  "Irish  Melodies,"  which  sung 
themselves  into  everybody's  heart.  In  the  same  year  the  veteran 
Crabbe,  after  a  silence  of  two  decades,  reentered  lie  literary  arena 
with  his  "Parish  Register,"  four  editions  of  which  were  called  for 
within  eighteen  months.  In  1809  Campbell  published  his  "Gertrude 
of  Wyoming,"  in  company  with  several  shorter  poems,  and  found 
also  an  enthusiastic  reception.  "Whatever  had  been  said  of  ^The 
Pleasures  of  Hope,'  was  repeated  with  increased  emphasis  in  praise 
of  'Gertrude.'  .  .  .  The  reception  given  to  the  poem  in  America  was 
cordial  and  flattering."  Mary  Mitford,  like  thousands  of  other 
British  ladies,  found  it  "that  most  exquisite  of  all  human  produc- 
tions." Perhaps  it  revived  enthusiasm  for  the  overworked  metre 
which  it  used.  At  any  rate,  less  than  two  years  after  its  appearance, 
according  to  Miss  Mitford,  "Messieurs  the  reviewers  are  unanimous 
in  their  recommendation  of  the  Spenser  stanza";  and  these  demands 
of  the  reviewers  were  met  a  few  months  later  by  "Childe  Harold." 
Campbell  was  the  fellow  countryman  of  Scott,  and  Moore  and 
Crabbe  were  both  favorites  with  him.  There  was  a  mutual  sympathy 
among  the  popular  favorites  which  argues  a  common  element  in 
their  work.  Different  as  their  poems  appear,  they  alike  avoided  the 
mysticism  and  brooding,  dimly  formulated  thought  of  the  great 
unpopular  visionaries.  They  all,  though  in  widely  different  ways, 
combined  picturesqueness,  lucidity,  human  life,  and  narrative  inci- 
dent; and  while  they  spread  the  sails  of  imagination,  they  carried 
what  seemed  to  John  Bull  a  wholesome  ballast  of  common  sense. 

Meanwhile  James  Montgomery,  the  poet  of  Sheffield,  had  a  con- 
siderable, though  minor  vogue  among  readers  more  pious  than 
literary.  His  "West  Indies,"  1810,  which  was  widely  read,  poured 
righteous  indignation  on  the  slave  trade,  and  contained  some  of  the 
merits  of  the  pure-hearted  poet  whom  it  imitated: 

Lamented  Cowper!  in  thy  path  I  tread; 

O!  that  on  me  were  thy  meek  spirit  shed! 

The  woes  that  wring  my  bosom  once  were  thine; 

Be  all  thy  virtues,  all  thy  genius,  mine. 

[  121  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

Less  can  be  said  in  praise  of  his  oversentimentalized  "Wanderer  of 
Switzerland"  (1806),  which  laments  in  dialogue  the  subjugation 
of  Tell's  country  by  the  French. 

Shepherd.  "Switzerland  then  gave  thee  birth?" 
Wanderer,  "Ay — 'twas  Switzerland  of  yore; 

But,  degraded  spot  of  earth,  * 

Thou  art  Switzerland  no  more." 

Montgomery  was  of  Scotch  blood  and  born  in  Ayrshire  when  Burns 
was  a  boy  there.  From  1805  to  181 2  Crabbe  was  the  only  poet  with 
any  popularity  who  was  not  either  Irish  or  Scotch.  Montgomery, 
like  the  other,  somewhat  later  poet  of  Sheffield,  Ebenezer  Elliott,  is 
not  among  the  giants;  but  we  must  remember  in  favor  of  these  men 
that  they  wrote  among  much  less  encouraging  surroundings  than 
most  of  the  great  masters.  Wordsworth  in  a  discussion  on  national 
education  declared  that  "Heaven  and  Hell  are  scarcely  more  dif- 
ferent from  each  other  than  Sheffield  and  Manchester,  etc.,  differ 
from  the  plains  and  valleys  of  Surrey,  Essex,  Cumberland,  or 
Westmoreland." 

The  popular  reign  of  Scott,  if  it  did  not  assist,  at  least  accom- 
panied a  considerable  vogue  for  several  of  his  minor  countrymen. 
"The  Sabbath,"  by  James  Grahame,  a  wholesome  but  rather  unin- 
spired poem  of  the  Cowper  type,  which  first  appeared  anonymously 
in  1804,  ran  through  three  editions  in  1805,  during  the  dawn  of  the 
great  Sir  Walter's  reign.  Southey,  who  admired  it,  said  that  it  "had 
found  its  way  from  one  end  of  Great  Britain  to  the  other."  None 
of  Joanna  Baillie's  plays  had  won  much  success  on  the  stage  before 
1805;  but  in  1 8 10  she  achieved  a  genuine  triumph  on  the  boards 
of  Edinburgh  with  her  "Family  Legend." 

-  In  1 81 2  with  "Childe  Harold,"  Byron  became  the  reigning 
favorite,  and  Scott  very  soon  withdrew  from  the  competition. 
"Rokeby"  and  "The  Bridal  of  Triermain"  were  both  published 
in  January,  18 13,  after  which  date  the  author  planned  no  long  new 
poem.  His  "Lord  of  the  Isles"  and  "Harold  the  Dauntless,"  though 
mainly  written  afterward,  had  been  conceived  before  "Rokeby" 
appeared,  and  were  evidently  completed  by  a  perfunctory  effort. 

[  122  ] 


THE  POPULAR  SUPREMACY  OF  SCOTT 

' 'Notwithstanding  therefore,  the  eminent  success  of  Byron,  and  the 
great  chance  of  his  taking  the  wind  out  of  my  sails,  there  was,  I 
judged,  a  species  of  cowardice  in  desisting  from  the  task  which  I 
had  undertaken."  Both  sales  and  critical  approval,  though  still  great, 
were  already  declining,  and  the  poetical  supremacy  of  Scott  was  over. 

The  rise  of  Byron,  however,  was  not  the  only  reason  why  Scott 
abandoned  rhyme.  He  had  good  judgment  enough  to  realize  that  his 
poetical  vein,  which  was  a  narrow  one,  was  becoming  exhausted. 
More  than  that,  a  swarm  of  imitators  had  made  him  eager  to  leave 
the  old  paths.  "The  present  author,"  he  said  in  1830,  "like  Bobadil, 
had  taught  his  trick  of  fence  to  a  hundred  gentlemen  (and 
ladies),  who  could  fence  very  nearly  or  quite  as  well  as  himself. 
For  this  there  was  no  remedy;  the  harmony  became  tiresome  and 
ordinary,  and  both  the  original  inventor  and  his  invention  must 
have  fallen  into  contempt  if  he  had  not  found  out  another  road  to 
public  favor."  "Indeed,  in  most  similar  cases,"  remarked  Scott  very 
truly,  "the  inventors  of  such  novelties  have  their  reputation  de- 
stroyed by  their  own  imitators,  as  Actaeon  fell  under  the  fury  of  his 
own  dogs." 

We  will  not  counteract  the  beneficent  destructiveness  of  nature  by 
naming  all  the  "hundred  gentlemen  and  ladies."  A  few  examples 
will  show  how  "both  the  original  inventor  and  his  invention  must 
have  fallen  into  contempt"  had  they  remained  long  in  such  company. 
Among  the  "gentlemen,"  William  Sotheby,  "that  itch  of  scribbling 
personified,"  as  Byron  called  him,  published  a  little  before 
"Rokeby"  his  "Constance  de  Castile."  It  is  a  rhyming  narrative  in 
ten  cantos,  which  represents  "Marmion"  translated  from  England 
to  Spain  and  from  good  poetry  to  bad. 

Throned  in  St.  Andrew's  holy  walls, 
Edward  each  summoned  warrior  calls. 
Knight,  banneret,  and  baron  bold. 
Who  of  his  realm  high  tenure  hold. 
There,  too,  in  pomp  of  priestly  state, 
Albert,  the  mitred  abbot,  sate. 

Among  the  "ladies"  was  Margaret  Holford  (Mrs.  Hodson),  whose 
"Wallace,  or  the  Fight  of  Falkirk:  A  Metrical  Romance"  came 

[  123  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

close  on  the  heels  of  "Marmion"  like  a  jackal  after  a  lion,  and, 
according  to  Mary  Mitford,  "is  said  to  have  excited  the  jealousy  of 
our  great  modern  minstrel."  Miss  Holford  also  wrote  a  few  ballads, 
and  poured  out  her  feminine  admiration  for  Scott  in  lines  on  his 
"Lay."  In  some  very  astounding  and  unprophetic  verses  she 
could  say: 

Methinks,  arrived  at  Fame's  eternal  dome, 
Already  round  my  brow  her  leaves  entwine; 
Smiling,  I  mark  how  Time's  o'erwhelming  gloom 
Steals  silently  o'er  many  a  soul  supine. 
And  feel  oblivion  never  can  be  mine. 

One  can  see  how  a  lesser  man  than  Scott  would  not  wish  to  be 
bracketed  with  her.  Miss  Mitford  herself  some  years  later  became 
an  eminent  prose  realist.  At  this  time  she  was  a  hopelessly  minor 
poetess,  who  also  wrote  imitations  of  Sir  Walter  in  manner  quite 
unlike  "Our  Village."  For  twenty  years  the  "Harp  of  the  North" 
was  waked  by  Tom,  Dick,  and  Harry, 

How  rude  soe'er  the  hand 
That  ventured  o'er  its  magic  maze  to  stray. 

The  competitors  who  drove  Scott  out  of  his  field  were  not  con- 
fined to  the  absurd,  but  included  genuine  poets.  Byron  himself  in 
1 813  swung  over  to  the  "light  horseman  stanza"  of  the  Border 
Minstrel,  in  which  he  varied  from  utter  dissimilarity  to  obvious 
imitation.  Rogers  tried  the  same  narrative  metre  the  next  year  in 
"Jacqueline." 

Meanwhile  a  note  less  borrowed  perhaps  but  more  closely  kin- 
dred came  from  Scott's  old  friend  and  protegi  James  Hogg.  Early 
disadvantages  belated  the  harvest  of  his  genius,  which  did  not  come 
until  after  he  was  forty.  His  "Mountain  Bard"  in  1807  had  con- 
tained some  good  local  color  and  grim  humor,  but  had  made  no 
marked  impression.  In  the  year  of  "Rokeby"  and  "The  Giaour"  he 
published  his  one  great  poem,  "The  Queen's  Wake";  and  Hogg  at 
his  best  here  does  not  compare  so  unfavorably  with  Scott  at  his 
second  best.  Hogg  was  no  mere  imitator.  He  spoke  truly,  though 
with  characteristic  conceit,  when  he  said:  "Dear  Sir  Walter!  Ye 

[  124  ] 


THE  POPULAR  SUPREMACY  OF  SCOTT 

can  never  suppose  that  I  belang  to  your  School  o'  Chivalry!  Ye  are 
the  king  o'  that  school,  but  I'm  the  king  o'  the  Mountain  and  Fairy 
School,  which  is  a  far  higher  ane  nor  yours."  He  was  more  akin  to 
the  Celtic  dreamer  and  less  to  the  Scandinavian  Viking  than  his 
famous  friend,  yet  enough  like  his  great  contemporary  to  make  that 
proud  though  genial  spirit  feel  crowded  in  his  poetic  domain  and 
restless  there. 

Hogg  has  far  worse  lapses  of  taste  than  are  ever  found  in 
"Marmion"  or  "Rokeby,"  and  none  of  the  epic  sweep  and  dignity 
which  Scott  attained  partially  and  fitfully;  but  the  lesser  man  has 
the  greater  variety,  the  more  strings  to  his  harp.  Of  Border  chivalry 
he  can  tell,  not  as  well  as  the  "Last  Minstrel,"  but  very  respectably. 

O,  but  the  Harden  lads  were  true. 

And  bore  them  bravely  in  the  broil! 

The  doughty  laird  of  wild  Buccleugh 
Raged  like  a  lion  in  the  toil. 

The  supernatural  of  Hogg  is  much  more  crude  at  its  worst  than 
that  of  Scott,  but  more  naively  genuine  at  its  best,  as  in  "The  Abbot 
M'Kinnon"  when  the  dead  saint  whom  the  lustful  abbot  serves 
comes  back  to  earth  to  drown  the  offender. 

Then  the  old  man  arose  and  stood  up  on  the  prow, 

And  fixed  his  dim  eyes  on  the  ocean  below; 

And  they  heard  him  saying,  "Oh,  woe  is  me! 

But  great  as  the  sin  must  the  sacrifice  be." 

Oh,  mild  was  his  eye  and  his  manner  sublime. 

When  he  looked  unto  heaven,  and  said — "Now  is  the  time." 

The  two  most  successful  moods  of  Hogg  are  hardly  found  in  Scott's 
verse.  The  first  of  these  is  the  Ettrick  Shepherd's  sly  humor  mixed 
with  diablerie,  in  which  he  betrays  a  slight  affinity  to  "Tam 
O'Shanter."  "The  Witch  of  Fife"  is  a  humble  masterpiece  in 
this  vein. 

They  flew  to  the  vaultis  of  merry  Carlisle, 

Quhair  they  enterit  free  as  ayr; 
And  they  drank  and  they  drank  of  the  bishopis  wyne 

Quhill  they  culde  drynk  ne  mair. 

[    125    ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

The  auld  guidman  he  grew  so  crouse, 

He  dancit  on  the  mouldy  ground, 
And  he  sang  the  bonniest  sangs  of  Fyfe, 

And  he  tuzzlit  the  kerlyngs*  round. 

A  more  realistic  and  satirical  humor  appears  in  his  description  of 
the  competing  bards,  the  greatest  poets  of  ancient  Scotland: 

A  simpler  race  you  shall  not  see, 
Awkward  and  vain  as  men  can  be. 

Hogg  had  no  romantic  illusions  as  to  the  character  of  the  genus 
irritabile.  But  his  best  work  of  all  is  that  of  elvish,  Celtic  unrealism, 
as  it  comes  pure  from  the  wellspring  in  "Kilmeny": 

They  bore  her  far  to  a  mountain  green, 
To  see  what  mortal  never  had  seen; 
And  they  seated  her  high  on  a  purple  sward. 
And  bade  her  heed  what  she  saw  and  heard. 
And  note  the  changes  the  spirits  wrought. 
For  now  she  lived  in  the  land  of  thought. 

"The  Queen's  Wake,"  like  "The  Canterbury  Tales,"  encloses  a 
series  of  recitals  in  a  narrative  framework.  It  makes  no  attempt 
to  rival  Chaucer  in  character  analysis,  but  creates  a  picturesque 
panorama  of  Queen  Mary's  faction-torn  court  at  Holyrood  palace. 
The  whole  ends  with  a  Parthian  shot  at  contemporary  criticism,  for 
the  prize  is  given  to  a  lay  which  Hogg  as  well  as  most  of  his  readers 
must  have  considered  among  the  poorest. 

'Twas  party  all,  not  minstrel  worth. 
But  honour  of  the  south  and  north. 

After  1 813  Hogg,  like  his  great  brother  poet,  fell  off  markedly 
in  power  and  subsequently  in  popularity;  but  unlike  Scott,  he  did 
not  know  enough  to  quit  fishing  the  empty  pond.  His  later  medieval 
romances,  "Mador  of  the  Moore"  and  "Queen  Hynde,"  are  spine- 
less imitations,  relieved  only  by  a  few  touches  of  conscious — or 
unconscious — ^humor.  The  year  of  "Rokeby"  and  "The  Queen's 
Wake"  closed,  not  only  the  popular  reign  of  Scott  in  verse  but  also 

*  carlins,  old  hags. 

[  126  ] 


THE  POPULAR  SUPREMACY  OF  SCOTT 

that  of  his  countrymen,  for  Campbell  by  this  time  was  almost  dead 
as  a  poet.  Many  an  edition  of  "Marmion"  and  "The  Lady  of  the 
Lake/'  of  "The  Queen's  Wake"  and  "The  Pleasures  of  Hope"  was 
yet  to  be  issued;  but  the  prestige  of  all  the  Scotch  poets,  great  and 
little,  Scott,  Hogg,  Campbell,  Montgomery,  Grahame,  Joanna 
Baillie,  had  reached  its  meridian  and  was  on  tie  downward  slope. 


r  127  ] 


CHAPTER  VI 

The  London  Society  Poets:  The  Popular  Supremacy  of 
Byron,  i8 12-1820 

All  of  the  good  poetry  which  we  have  discussed  hitherto  came  from 
the  provinces.  It  is  time  now  to  consider  London.  The  flower  of  neo- 
classical literature  from  the  Restoration  to  the  death  of  Pope  was 
mainly  the  literature  of  London  authors,  of  men  for  whom,  even 
when  their  permanent  residence  was  not  there,  the  great  city  was 
the  Mecca  of  their  hopes  and  ideals.  They  were  Londoners  moreover 
of  the  upper  social  strata.  Sir  George  Etherege,  Sir  John  Vanbrugh, 
Congreve,  who  wished  to  be  forgotten  as  a  dramatist  and  remem- 
bered only  as  a  gentleman,  were  types  of  the  Restoration  comedian. 
It  was  as  courtiers  and  men  of  affairs  that  Dryden,  Addison,  and 
Swift  moved  in  metropolitan  circles;  the  latter  considered  as  tragedy 
a  life  of  retirement  that  would  have  delighted  Wordsworth,  Pope, 
too  feeble  in  body  for  the  salon  or  the  cabinet,  was  none  the  less  the 
associate  of  literati  in  high  social  standing,  and  Prior  the  genial 
companion  of  men  much  more  important  socially  than  himself.  The 
peculiar  quality  of  Augustan  literature  has  been  considered  as  the 
voice  of  a  temporary  spirit  pervading  all  Great  Britain;  was  it  not 
rather  to  a  considerable  degree  the  voice  of  a  permanent  spirit, 
always  to  be  found  in  a  certain  class  of  a  certain  region?  The  Augus- 
tan age  can  be  partly,  though  of  course  not  wholly,  explained  on  the 
ground  that  other  classes  and  districts  were  comparatively  dumb; 
and  the  romantic  generation  on  the  ground  that  they  passionately 
and  eloquently  found  their  voice.  The  districts  of  Bristol,  West- 
moreland, and  the  Border  had  never  been  genuinely  neo-classic, 
they  had  simply  been  poetically  barren.  From  the  days  of  Cromwell 
down,  the  upper  middle  class,  except  when  its  writers  became  the 

[  128  ] 


THE  LONDON  SOCIETY  POETS 

protiges  of  noblemen,  had  been  far  less  consistently  imbued  with 
the  spirit  of  Boileau  and  Racine  than  the  courtly  wits  of  Holland 
House  and  Saint  James.  Where  writers  of  humbler  status  did  follow 
the  Pope  tradition,  as  in  the  case  of  Johnson  and  Goldsmith,  they 
were  usually  denizens  of  London.  Turning  now  from  Southey,  Cole- 
ridge, Wordsworth,  Scott,  and  their  minor  co-workers,  all  n>en  of 
the  middle  class  and  of  the  provinces,  one  finds  in  the  city  and  the 
social  life  which  had  produced  Pope  and  Addison  a  century  before, 
the  spirit  and  tradition  of  the  Queen  Anne  wits,  mixed  with  much 
that  was  utterly  foreign  to  their  age,  but  surviving  here  late  into 
the  nineteenth  century  as  it  survived  nowhere  else. 

Beginning  about  1800  there  gradually  formed  at  London  a  little 
knot  of  poets,  who  were  on  terms  of  close  familiarity  with  each  other, 
and  who,  though  not  by  any  means  always  of  blue  blood  themselves, 
had  the  entree  of  the  best  society.  Whatever  the  rank  of  their  ances- 
tors, they  themselves  were  finished  men  of  the  world,  habitually 
frequenting  homes  and  clubs  where  Keats  was  uninvited  and  Words- 
worth a  discordant  note.  Their  attitude  toward  life  was  often  colored 
by  the  atmosphere  of  clubs  and  the  broad  but  shallow  cosmopoli- 
tanism of  high  society.  As  a  literary  phenomenon,  the  chief  mark 
of  this  group  was  the  close  union  of  romantic  medievalism.  Oriental- 
ism, and  Wertherism  with  the  most  unadulterated  type  of  the  Pope 
tradition.  Every  member  of  it  except  Rogers  and  Luttrell  wrote 
poetry  that  according  to  any  possible  definition  would  be  called 
wildly  romantic.  Every  member  of  it  without  exception  wrote  a 
considerable  amount  of  verse  in  the  most  servile  imitation  of 
Augustan  models.  The  bulk  of  this  latter  work  as  poetry  deserved 
the  neglect  that  it  has  met;  but  as  an  index  of  literary  currents  it 
has  that  himian  interest  which  it  never  had  as  literature. 

The  first  to  arrive  on  the  field  was  Samuel  Rogers,  a  wealthy  and 
artistic  young  man  of  the  upper  middle  class.  Before  1793  he  had 
made  his  home  in  the  neighboring  country  at  Newington  Green,  and 
while  there  had  won  nation-wide  popularity  with  his  "Pleasures  of 
Memory."  After  1793  he  lived  partly  in  London,  wholly  there  after 
1798,  and  soon  became  the  friend  of  Charles  James  Fox,  Lord 
Holland,  and  other  prominent  men. 

[  129  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

"  In  1799  Thomas  Moore  journeyed  to  the  same  city,  and,  like 
Rogers,  made  it  his  home  for  years.  His  genial  personality,  rare 
musical  powers,  and  Irish  wit  rendered  him  soon  a  popular  favorite 
among  people  of  rank,  including  Lord  Moira;  and  his  first  volume 
was  dedicated  to  the  Prince  of  Wales.  After  his  marriage  in  181 1 
he  settled  his  family  at  Sloperton  Cottage,  more  than  half  way  to 
Bristol  and  within  two  miles  of  the  poet  Bowles,  whose  warm  friend 
he  became;  but  he  was  still  much  in  London  society,  and  a  Lon- 
doner in  all  his  affihations  and  feelings.  In  1803,  Thomas  Campbell, 
already  famous  as  the  author  of  "The  Pleasures  of  Hope,"  came 
down  from  Scotland,  married,  and  took  up  his  residence  in  Pimlico. 
A  few  months  later  he  settled  at  Sydenham  in  Kent,  where  he  lived 
for  seventeen  years;  but  was  much  in  the  metropolis,  in  contact 
with  its  writers  and  social  leaders. 

The  greatest  addition  of  all  to  this  band  was  Lord  Byron  when 
he  came  back  from  his  Mediterranean  tour  in  181 2.  Before  that 
date  he  had  neither  had  much  personal  intercourse  with  great  poets, 
nor,  according  to  Lord  Holland,  had  he  moved  in  the  best  society. 
He  had  already,  however,  shown  his  mental  affinity  for  Moore, 
whose  none  too  chaste  "Poems  by  the  Late  Thomas  Little,"  he  tells 
us,  "I  knew  by  heart  in  1803,  being  then  in  my  fifteenth  year." 
In  181 2  he  published  the  first  two  cantos  of  "Childe  Harold,"  woke 
up  one  morning  and  found  himself  famous;  and  for  the  next  three 
or  four  years  he  was  the  central  figure  of  the  London  society  poets 
as  well  as  the  lion  of  the  hour.  In  181 6  he  broke  with  his  wife,  was 
insulted  in  the  streets  of  London,  and  left  the  city  and  the  nation 
never  to  return.  He  still  corresponded  with  Moore  and  Rogers;  but 
henceforth  new  influences  were  at  work  on  him. 

A  minor  figure  in  this  band — very  minor  as  a  poet  though  less 
so  as  a  personality — was  W.  R.  Spencer,  a  man  like  Byron  of  noble 
;  family.  Byron,  Moore,  and  he  were  the  only  three  literary  men  in 
England  who  were  members  of  Watier's,  the  fashionable  dandies' 
club,  where  Beau  Brummel,  its  perpetual  president,  was  gambling 
his  life  away.  Another  lesser  light,  who  blossomed  into  minor  poetry 
late  in  life  and  after  Byron's  departure,  was  Henry  Luttrell.  Richard 
Sheridan,  the  aged  dramatist  and  author,  was  also  much  in  their 

[  130  ] 


THE  LONDON  SOCIETY  POETS 

company,  although  his  writing  days  were  past.  Nor  must  we  over- 
look Lord  Holland,  socially  one  of  the  leading  figures  and  in  litera- 
ture negligible,  but  still  an  author.  An  eager  student  of  Spanish 
writers,  especially  the  dramatists,  he  translated  a  number  of  Spanish 
plays,  in  1806  published  a  memoir  of  Lope  de  Vega,  and  in  18 13 
welcomed  his  fellow  pro-Spaniard  Southey  to  the  great  resources 
of  his  library. 

Rogers  appears  to  have  been  the  personal  magnet  who  drew  these 
different  particles  together,  as  Coleridge  did  the  Bristol  Eddy,  and 
Scott  the  northern  one.  Rogers,  in  spite  of  his  caustic  tongue,  had 
an  inborn  ability  not  merely  for  getting  acquainted,  but  also  for 
making  enduring  friendships.  He  probably  met  Moore  in  1805,  and 
knew  Spencer  and  Luttrell  before  that.  As  early  as  1801  he  and 
Lord  Holland  had  dined  with  Campbell;  and  it  was  he  who  almost 
immediately  after  Byron's  return  from  the  East,  introduced  the 
wandering  Childe  to  Lord  Holland. 

We  have  here  a  band  of  poets  representing,  if  not  a  literary  school, 
at  least  a  distinct  literary  t3^e.  Aside  from  their  late  and  rather 
illogical  championship  of  Pope  they  built  up  no  artistic  theory; 
they  were  neither  critics  nor  philosophers;  but  they  showed  in  both 
their  lives  and  their  writings  common  elements  lacking  in  all  their 
great  contemporaries.  They  represented  a  social  "set,"  at  times  a 
distinct  social  group.  This  began  somewhat  after  1800,  reached  its^ 
maximum  during  the  membership  of  Byron,  and  after  that  grad-j 
ually  disintegrated.  Its  two  chief  rendezvous  were  Holland  Hous^ 
and  the  home  of  Rogers.  A  third,  less  important  for  us,  was  the  resi- 
dence of  Lydia  White,  an  enthusiastic  spinster  and  entertainer  of 
social  lions,  so  enthusiastic  that  in  her  last  days,  with  rouge  on  her 
cheeks  and  death  in  her  heart,  she  entertained  them  still. 

Macaulay  in  1831  called  Holland  House  "the  favorite  resort  of 
wits  and  beauties,  of  painters  and  poets,  of  scholars,  philosophers, 
and  statesmen";  and  as  he  found  it  then,  it  had  been  for  a  third 
of  a  century.  Southey,  who  was  there  in  1813,  describes  a  typical 
scene.  "I  dined  on  Sunday  at  Holland  House,  with  some  eighteen 
or  twenty  persons.  Sharp  was  there,  who  introduced  me  with  all 
due  form  to  Rogers  and  to  Sir  James  Mackintosh.  ...  In  the 

[  131  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

evening  Lord  Byron  came  in."  The  great  mansion,  with  its  vast 
library,  its  magnificent  dinners,  its  galaxy  of  intellectual  stars,  was 
an  inspiration  to  the  urban  or  cosmopolitan  genius  as  Derwent  and 
Skiddaw  were  to  Wordsworth  or  Smailholm  keep  and  the  ruins  of 
Hermitage  castle  to  Scott.  Unlike  them,  the  literary  inspiration 
which  it  gave  was  eighteenth  century  and  conservative.  Here  lin- 
gered as  tradition  all  that  had  been  best  in  the  days  of  Queen  Anne. 
Addison  had  lived  here  after  1716  with  his  wife,  the  Countess  of 
Warwick.  Charles  James  Fox,  the  brilliant  younger  brother  of  Lord 
Holland,  was  a  great  admirer  of  Pope's  "Eloisa,"  and  of  Voltaire's 
"Zaire."  Lord  Holland  himself,  according  to  Moore,  ''inclined  to 
place  Virgil  and  Racine  in  the  very  highest  rank,"  and  "gave  the 
last  lines  of  Denham's  'Cooper's  Hill'  as  a  specimen  of  perfect  har- 
mony in  versification."  It  was  natural  that  poets  who  dined  here 
frequently,  walked  where  Addison  had  walked,  and  discussed  with 
their  entertainers  the  beauties  of  Pope,  should  feel  more  sympathy 
with  the  neo-classic  tradition  than  tiieir  brethren  of  the  Quantock 
hills  and  Cumberland  mountains. 

In  1803  Rogers  moved  to  a  house  in  St.  James's  Place  built  and 
decorated  under  his  own  directions ;  and  there  he  lived  for  over  half 
a  century.  The  building  came  to  be  the  expression  of  the  author's 
somewhat  finical  but  genuinely  artistic  taste.  A  frieze  copied  from 
the  Parthenon  ran  around  the  staircase;  rare  paintings,  many  of 
which  are  now  in  the  National  Gallery,  and  copies  of  antique 
sculpture  adorned  the  walls.  Like  Holland  House  it  was  of  a  nature 
to  favor  neo-classic  tastes.  "This  coordination  in  Rogers'  house  was 
perfect.  The  general  impression  was  one  of  complete  harmony,  and 
that  impression  was  confirmed  by  the  effect  of  every  detail.  .  .  . 
It  is  the  same  in  his  poetry  as  it  was  in  his  home,  in  his  manners 
as  it  was  in  his  style  of  prose  composition.  'Of  nothing  too  much' 
was  its  motto."  Walter  Scott  wrote  to  him  of  his  home  in  1820: 
"As  you  have  made  the  most  classical  museum  I  can  conceive,  I 
have  been  attempting  a  Gothic."  "His  breakfast  table  was  perfect 
in  all  respects,"  says  Barry  Cornwall;  "and  the  company — where 
literature  mixed  with  fashion  and  rank,  each  having  a  fair  propor- 
tion— was  always  agreeable.  And  in  the  midst  of  all  his  hospitable 

[  132  ] 


THE  LONDON  SOCIETY  POETS 

glory  was  the  little  old  pleasant  man,  not  yet  infirm,  with  his  many 
anecdotes,  and  sub-acid  words  that  gave  flavor  and  pungency  to 
the  general  talk."  Here  for  years  the  witty  and  kind-hearted,  though 
caustic-tongued  poet  kept  something  as  near  a  literary  salon  as  an 
unaided  bachelor  could  be  expected  to  offer.  To  breakfast  with 
Rogers  and  to  dine  at  Holland  House  was  to  enter  the  best  literary 
society  of  the  time. 

Passing  from  Grasmere,  or  even  Ashestiel,  to  the  London  society 
poets  meant  entering  a  new  atmosphere.  Moore's  correspondence 
has  occasional  enthusiastic  references  to  nature  or  to  ancient  Ire- 
land; but  these  are  exceedingly  rare.  His  letters  are  largely  made 
up  of  breakfasts,  dinners,  amiable  chit-chat,  and  all  the  pleasures 
of  a  society  man.  We  find  a  significant  entry  in  his  diary:  "I  said 
how  well  calculated  the  way  in  which  Scott  had  been  brought  up 
was  to  make  a  writer  of  poetry  and  romance,  as  it  combined  all 
that  knowledge  of  rural  life  and  rural  legends  which  is  to  be  gained 
by  living  among  the  peasantry  and  joining  in  their  sports,  with  all 
the  advantages  which  an  aristocratic  education  gives.  I  said  that 
the  want  of  this  manly  training  showed  itself  in  my  poetry,  which 
would  perhaps  have  had  a  far  more  vigorous  character  if  it  had  not 
been  for  the  sort  of  boudoir  education  I  had  received."  In  1807  he 
wrote  to.  Miss  Godfrey:  "How  go  on  Spenser  [Spencer]  and  Rogers, 
and  the  rest  of  those  agreeable  rattles,  who  seem  to  think  life  such 
a  treat  that  they  can  never  get  enough  of  it?"  Spencer  was  a  brilliant 
drawing-room  entertainer,  who  delighted  Madame  de  Stael  with 
"his  universality  of  conversation."  Byron  mentions  "Moore,  Camp- 
bell, Rogers,  Spencer,  as  poets;  and  how  many  conversationists  to 
be  added  to  the  galaxy  of  stars."  Campbell  was  a  somewhat  more 
humble  figure  socially,  yet  in  181 2  we  find  him  "dancing  a  reel  with 
royalty";  and  a  little  later  Hazlitt,  in  lecturing  on  the  living  poets, 
put  him  in  the  same  "hot-pressed  super  fine- wove  paper"  school  as 
Rogers.  Their  urban  attitude  appears  in  its  most  unattractive  phase 
in  Byron.  In  1 814  he  wrote  of  the  Ettrick  shepherd:  "The  said  Hogg 
is  a  strange  being.  ...  I  think  very  highly  of  him,  as  a  poet;  but 
he,  and  half  of  these  Scotch  and  Lake  troubadours,  are  spoilt  by  liv- 
ing in  little  circles  and  petty  societies.  London  and  the  world  is  the 

[  133  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

only  place  to  take  the  conceit  out  of  a  man."  Some  time  later  he 
alludes  to  Southey,  Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  Joanna  Baillie,  Bowles, 
Milman,  Barry  Cornwall,  and  apparently  even  Campbell;  and  says: 
"The  pity  of  these  men  is,  that  they  never  lived  either  in  high  life, 
nor  in  solitude:  there  is  no  medium  for  the  knowledge  of  the  busy  or 
the  still  world.  .  .  .  Now  Moore  and  I,  the  one  by  circumstances, 
and  the  other  by  birth,  happened  to  be  free  of  the  corporation,  and 
to  have  entered  into  its  pulses  and  passions,  quarum  partes  juimus. 
Both  of  us  have  learnt  by  this  much  which  nothing  else  could  have 
taught  us."  Only  compare  with  this  the  utterance  of  Wordsworth: 
"It  is  an  awful  truth,  that  there  neither  is,  nor  can  be,  any  genuine 
enjoyment  of  poetry  among  nineteen  out  of  twenty  of  those  persons 
who  live,  or  wish  to  live,  in  the  broad  light  of  the  world;  among 
those  who  either  are,  or  are  striving  to  make  themselves,  people  of 
consideration  in  society."  Then  he  adds:  "This  is  a  truth,  and  an 
awful  one,  because  to  be  incapable  of  a  feeling  of  poetry,  in  my 
sense  of  the  word,  is  to  be  without  love  of  human  nature  and  rever- 
ence for  God";  which  is  in  odd  contrast  with  what  Moore  wrote 
confidentially  to  his  mother:  "If  I  am  to  be  poor,  I  had  rather  be  a 
poor  counsellor  than  a  poor  poet;  for  there  is  ridicule  attached  to 
the  latter,  which  the  former  may  escape."  Is  it  any  wonder  that  the 
London  society  poets  championed  Pope,  and  that  Wordsworth 
depreciated  him?  The  chasm  was  not  wholly  that  between  the  age 
of  Queen  Anne  and  the  age  of  George  IV;  it  was  also  a  permanent 
chasm  between  two  different  types  of  life  and  thought. 

Rogers,  the  most  catholic  in  his  friendships  though  the  most 
narrow  in  his  poetical  range,  was  after  1803  the  lifelong  friend  of 
Wordsworth.  Byron  admired  Coleridge's  "Christabel,"  helped  to 
get  his  "Remorse"  acted,  and  praised  Southey's  "Roderick."  In  gen- 
eral, however,  there  was  an  instinctive  hostility  in  literature,  and 
at  times  in  personal  relations,  between  the  London  society  poets  and 
the  "Lakers."  Rogers  apparently  was  no  enthusiast  about  Coleridge. 
Byron,  who  evidently  believed  consistency  a  virtue  unworthy  of  a 
peer,  lashed  the  whole  Lake  coterie  both  in  print  and  in  correspond- 
ence. Apart  from  his  slashing  invective,  each  group  is  mentioned 

[  134  ] 


THE  LONDON  SOCIETY  POETS 

with  astonishing  rareness  in  the  correspondence  of  the  other.  Toward 
Scott,  whose  genial  manliness  adapted  itself  equally  well  to  the  back- 
woodsman and  the  lord,  the  Holland  House  authors  were  uniformly- 
cordial;  of  the  minor  Scotch  writers  they  naturally  knew  little. 

Their  work  in  poetry,  as  we  have  said,  alternated  between  the 
florid  Dr.  Jekyll  of  wild  romance  and  the  wizened  Mr.  Hyde  of  neo- 
classic  tradition.  The  latter,  being  less  known,  may  be  taken  up 
the  first. 

Rogers  had  already  published  his  "Pleasures  of  Memory."  His 
"Epistle  to  a  Friend"  (1798)  and  "Human  Life"  (181 9)  are  in 
the  same  vein  of  sentimental  didacticism,  though  there  is  much 
kindly  experience  in  the  latter  poem  which  makes  one  see  how  the 
author  could  believe  it  his  best.  The  aims  and  models  of  both  poems 
are  indicated  in  the  opening  words  to  the  Preface  of  the  earlier  one: 
"Every  reader  turns  with  pleasure  to  those  passages  of  Horace, 
and  Pope  and  Boileau,  which  describe  how  they  lived  and  where  they 
dwelt;  and  which,  being  interspersed  among  tiieir  satirical  writings, 
derive  a  secret  and  irresistible  grace  from  the  contrast,  and  are 
admirable  examples  of  what  in  painting  is  termed  repose."  Of  the 
early  Pope  discipleship  and  "Pleasures  of  Hope"  of  Campbell  we 
have  already  spoken.  He  produced  nothing  worth  mentioning  in 
this  vein  during  his  London  years;  but  the  spirit  of  it  was  still  in 
him  as  shown  by  the  part  he  played  in  the  Bowles-Pope  Contro- 
versy. In  1 814  he  shocked  the  London  audience  before  which  he 
was  lecturing  by  preferring  Pope  to  Dryden.  Around  18 10  he  im- 
pressed Leigh  Hunt  as  a  "French  Virgil,"  "a  taste  over  anxious  not 
to  commit  itself,  and  refining  and  diminishing  nature  as  in  a  drawing- 
room  mirror.  This  fancy  was  strengthened  in  the  course  of  conver- 
sation, by  his  expatiating  on  the  greatness  of  Racine."  Spencer's 
longest  poem,  "The  Year  of  Sorrow,"  is  in  Dryden's  manner;  in  it 
he  says  to  the  "Daughters  of  Genius": 

Yours  be  the  task.  .  .  . 
The  rights  of  antique  beauty  to  proclaim, 
The  Gothic  fiend  from  all  her  realms  to  chase, 
And  throne  the  Grecian  goddess  in  her  place. 

[  ^35  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

The  bulk  of  his  meager  output  is  society  verse,  mildly  reminiscent 
of  Prior. 

Tom  Moore  wrote  many  hundred  lines  in  the  pure  Pope  tradition, 
much  of  it  inspired  by  his  unfortunate  trip  to  America,  of  which 
the  following  extract  from  his  poem  "To  the  Honorable  W.  R. 
Spencer"  may  be  sufficient  for  a  Yankee  audience: 

Take  Christians,  Mohawks,  democrats,  and  all 
From  the  rude  wigwam  to  the  congress  hall. 
From  man  the  savage,  whether  slaved  or  free. 
To  man  the  civilized,  less  tame  than  he, — 
'Tis  one  dull  chaos,  one  unfertile  strife 
Betwixt  half  polished  and  half  barbarous  life; 
Where  every  ill  the  ancient  world  could  brew 
Is  mixed  with  every  grossness  of  the  new; 
Where  all  corrupts,  though  little  can  entice, 
And  naught  is  known  of  luxury  but  its  vice. 

"Corruption"  and  "Intolerance,"  in  the  same  shopworn  dress,  were 
published  1808;  and  briefer  feeble  echoes  of  the  once  great  couplet 
were  composed  by  him  even  after  1830.  As  for  all  his  society  verse 
in  various  flippant  metres,  "The  Two  Penny  Post-Bag,"  "The  Fudge 
Family  in  Paris,"  etc.,  it  is  far  enough  from  the  wits  of  Queen  Anne 
but  much  nearer  to  them  than  to  Wordsworth.  Hunt  in  181 8  wrote 
of  Moore  as  "among  the  poets  who  were  bred  up  in  the  French 
school." 

Henry  Luttrell,  whose  verse,  according  to  Moore,  "was,  like 
everything  Luttrell  ever  did,  full  of  polish  and  point,"  composed 
his  "Advice  to  Julia"  and  "Letter  to  Julia"  in  octosyllabic  couplets, 
a  joint  product  of  Butler  and  Prior.  He  recognizes  frankly  that  his 
poetry  is  the  child  of  his  London  environment. 

Here  frown,  'tis  true,  no  hills  gigantic. 
Of  towering  height  and  shapes  romantic. 

The  Lake  does  not 

reflect  the  form 
Of  some  rude  castle,  seat  sublime 
Of  war,  and  violence,  and  crime.  .  .  . 

[  136  ] 


THE  LONDON  SOCIETY  POETS 

In  short,  Hyde-Park  is  not  the  Highlands. 
But,  though  ungraced  with  one  of  these, 
Still  we  have  lawns,  and  paths,  and  trees. 
Why  should  our  landscape  blush  for  shame? 
Tis  fresh  and  gay,  if  flat  and  tame. 
None  view  it  awe-struck  or  surprised ; 
But  still,  'tis  smart  and  civilized. 

All  of  which  is  no  bad  description  of  LuttrelFs  gracefully  mediocre 
verse.  His  Julia  is  a  modern  Belinda,  his  mood  that  of  "The  Rape 
of  the  Lock";  and  if  he  wrote  like  the  Augustans,  it  was  because 
he  lived  and  talked  like  them.  Milman,  after  breakfasting  at 
Rogers's  in  1834,  spoke  of  "Luttrell's  finely  pointed  sentences." 
Of  Byron's  poems  in  which  he  saw  fit  to 

venture  o'er 
The  path  which  Pope  and  Gifford  trod  before, 

"The  Age  of  Bronze"  was  written  after  he  left  England,  and  the 
others  between  1808  and  181 2.  "The  Waltz"  was  the  only  one  pub- 
lished in  England  during  the  four  years  of  Byron's  London  popu- 
larity, though  a  pirated  edition  of  "The  Curse  of  Minerva"  came 
out  in  Philadelphia  in  181 5.  Aside  from  "English  Bards  and 
Scotch  Reviewers"  none  of  them  had  genuine  merit;  but  that  Byron 
should  have  composed  over  three  thousand  lines  of  satire  in  the 
neo-classic  couplet  is  a  striking  index  of  his  literary  faith.  On  his 
return  from  the  Mediterranean  he  was  eager  to  print  his  "Hints 
from  Horace"  instead  of  "Childe  Harold,"  such  was  his  confidence 
in  the  magic  of  the  old-time  metre.  In  "English  Bards"  the  dried-up 
mummy  of  the  Queen  Anne  tradition  became  for  an  hour  alive, 
took  on  a  real  likeness  to  the  great  though  narrow  genius  that  it  so 
often  had  travestied. 

Oh  pen  perverted!  paper  misapplied! 
Had  Cottle  still  adorned  the  counter's  side, 
Bent  o'er  the  desk,  or,  bom  to  useful  toils. 
Been  taught  to  make  the  paper  which  he  soils. 
Ploughed,  delved,  or  plied  the  oar  with  lusty  limb, 
He  had  not  sung  of  Wales,  nor  I  of  him. 

[  137  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

Even  Byron's  two  wildly  romantic  tales,  "Lara"  and  ''The  Corsair," 
are  metrically  modeled  on  Crabbe,  and  have  many  separate  lines 
reminiscent  of  Pope's  compression  and  antithesis: 

Consign  their  souls  to  man's  eternal  foe, 

And  seal  their  own  to  spare  some  wanton's  woe; 

or 

And  they  that  smote  for  freedom  or  for  sway, 
Deemed  few  were  slain,  while  more  remained  to  slay. 

The  influence  of  Rogers,  both  as  an  acquaintance  and  as  a  popular 
poet,  must  have  helped  considerably  this  neo-classic  tendency. 
Byron  greatly  overrated  him.  Moore  believed  him  something  of  an 
arbiter  elegantiarum  and  wrote:  "Rogers'  criticisms  have  twice 
upset  all  I  have  done."  Another  man  whose  influence  must  not  be 
forgotten  was  Gifford,  after  1809  the  editor  of  The  Quarterly 
Review.  He  could  hardly  be  called  a  member  of  the  social  group  now 
under  consideration,  but  he  was  often  in  contact  with  them  and  com- 
manded their  respect  as  a  critic.  He  was  a  militant  neo-classicist, 
more  confirmed  than  Rogers,  who  after  all,  like  Pope  himself,  was 
rather  catholic  in  taste  and  upheld  the  couplet  simply  because  it  was 
peculiarly  adapted  to  his  own  moods  and  natural  gifts.  Byron  when 
in  Europe  had  Gifford  choose  between  different  readings  in  his  MSS. 
or  make  other  changes,  and  tells  us:  "I  always  regarded  him  as  my 
literary  father,  and  myself  as  his  prodigal  son." 

Even  among  the  London  society  poets,  however,  these  Queen 
Anne  imitations  were  a  very  insignificant  part  of  the  poetry  written. 
Yet  before  we  turn  to  the  rest  we  must  remember  that  most  of  this 
also  is  far  from  great.  Whether  Wordsworth  was  right  for  all  time 
or  not,  he  was  right  for  his  own  age  and  Byron  was  wrong  as  to  the 
poetical  influences  of  country  and  town.  Luttrell  and  Spencer  were 
very  minor  figures.  Moore,  Campbell,  and  Rogers  were  all  hailed 
in  their  own  day  as  poets  of  the  first  rank,  for,  being  more  closely 
in  contact  with  the  public  than  Wordsworth  and  Blake,  they  knew 
better  what  it  wanted;  but  now  the  glory  of  all  three  is  departed. 
More  than  that,  some  of  the  best  work  of  Campbell  had  been  written 
before  his  London  life,  "The  Pleasures  of  Hope"  in  Scotland,  the 

[  138  ] 


THE  LONDON  SOCIETY  POETS 

noble  "Mariners  of  England"  in  Germany.  What  endures  best  of 
Moore's  work  is  neither  his  vers  de  societi  nor  his  popular  Oriental 
romances,  but  the  part  which  owed  least  to  his  London  environment 
and  most  to  his  Celtic  heritage,  "The  Irish  Melodies."  Even  the 
poetry  produced  by  Byron  during  this  period  becomes  on  analysis 
woefully  unsatisfactory.  Because  he  was  both  a  great  and  a  popular 
writer  the  world  has  believed  that  his  greatness  and  his  popularity 
went  hand  in  hand,  a  belief  that  hardly  squares  with  the  facts. 
Before  1816  he  was  an  astoundingly  popular  second-rate  poet.  After 
181 6  he  was  a  great  world  genius  with  dwindling  applause.  It  is  an 
impressive  fact  that  this  gifted  Englishman  wrote  almost  none  of  his 
best  poetry  on  British  soil.  "There's  not  a  joy  the  world  can  give," 
the  "Ode  to  Napoleon  Buonaparte,"  and  the  best  of  the  "Hebrew 
Melodies"  are  practically  all  diat  our  age  much  cares  for,  save  two 
or  three  lyrics  written  after  the  rupture  with  his  wife  and  on  the 
very  eve  of  his  departure.  All  of  "Childe  Harold,"  "Don  Juan," 
"Beppo,"  "The  Vision  of  Judgment,"  "The  Dream,"  "The  Epistle 
to  Augusta,"  "Darkness,"  all  tiie  dramas,  both  good  and  bad,  "The 
Prisoner  of  Chillon,"  "Mazeppa,"  were  composed  on  the  continent. 
Of  the  extracts  from  Byron  in  Ward's  "English  Poets,"  only  about 
one-seventh  were  written  before  the  scandal  of  181 6. 

There  is  another  fact  closely  related  to  this  general  mediocrity. 
Wordsworth's  return  to  nature,  Scott's  return  to  feudalism,  grew 
out  of  emotions  that  had  been  deeply  felt  from  boyhood.  Hogg, 
despite  all  his  faults,  wrote  of  stories  that  he  had  lived  with  as  a 
child.  About  the  "romantic"  elements  in  the  work  of  the  London 
society  poets  there  is  frequently  a  made-to-order  atmosphere.  We 
feel  too  often  that  they  wrote  with  their  ears  open  for  the  applause 
or  hisses  of  the  audience.  We  detect  the  rouge  on  their  odalisques 
and  the  false  beards  on  their  druids.  Spencer  in  1796  translated 
Burger's  "Lenore,"  it  being  the  fashion  that  year  to  translate  that 
poem.  By  1802  German  melodrama  was  unpopular,  so  he  wrote  his 
"Urania"  ridiculing  it.  Rogers's  "Columbus"  pictures  the  great  dis- 
coverer sailing  over  mystic  seas  aided  by  angels  and  opposed  by 
demons,  the  whole  forming  a  monstrous  compound  of  "The  Ancient 
Mariner"  and  "The  Rape  of  the  Lock."  There  are  admirable  pas- 

[  139  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

sages  in  CampbelPs  "Gertrude  of  Wyoming,"  and  in  the  Oriental 
romances  of  Byron  and  Moore;  but  who  can  feel  that  as  wholes 
they  ring  true?  In  these  works  the  authors  became  romantic  poets, 
not  because  nature  made  them  so,  but  because  the  popular  demand 
made  them  so. 

Such  efforts  were  not  wholly  in  vain,  however;  and  in  the  Scotch 
poems  of  Campbell  and  the  Irish  poems  of  Moore  there  is  often  a 
nobler  note.  In  Moore  both  the  Pope  imitations  and  the  sham 
Orientalism  of  '^Lalla  Rookh"  and  "The  Loves  of  the  Angels"  were 
half-hearted  responses  to  currents  of  taste  among  his  associates. 
"Tell  Kate  she  must  leave  her  Boileau  to  me  in  her  will,"  he  wrote 
to  his  mother  in  1812 ;  but  though  his  head  was  neo-classic,  his  heart 
was  Irish.  The  Celtic  strain  in  him  may  be  adulterated  and  artificial- 
ized;  but  there  is  enough  of  the  genuine  mood  to  make  parts  of  the 
"Irish  Melodies"  great  poetry.  How  could  we  expect  compelling  sin- 
cerity in  narrative  verse  or  satire  from  the  man  who  wrote: 
"Music, — the  only  art  for  which,  in  my  own  opinion,  I  was  born  with 
a  real  natural  love;  my  poetry,  such  as  it  is,  having  sprung  out  of 
my  deep  feeling  for  music."  In  "The  Irish  Melodies"  there  are 
many  notes,  one  of  the  best  of  them  that  of  romantic  medievalism. 
Almost  in  the  year  when  he  printed  the  satirical  couplets  of  "Intol- 
erance" he  was  singing  of  Brian  the  Brave,  killed  at  Clontarf  in  the 
eleventh  century,  and  of  the  lady  who  walked  uninsulted  through 
his  kingdom,  though 

Rich  and  rare  were  the  gems  she  wore. 
In  Ossianic  dirge  he  tells  us, 

No  more  to  chiefs  and  ladies  bright 
The  harp  of  Tara  swells. 

On  Lough  Neagh's  bank  as  the  fisherman  strays, 

When  the  clear  cold  eve's  declining. 
He  sees  the  round  towers  of  other  days 

In  the  wave  beneath  him  shining. 

We  have  the  song  of  Fionnuala,  the  daughter  of  Lir,  who  "was,  by 
some  supernatural  power,  transformed  into  a  swan,  and  condemned 

[  140  ] 


THE  LONDON  SOCIETY  POETS 

to  wander,  for  many  hundred  years,  over  certain  lakes  and  rivers 
in  Ireland,  till  the  coming  of  Christianity";  the  song  of  the  ancient 
O'Ruark;  and  medieval  legends  of  St.  Senanus  and  St.  Kevin. 
O'Donohue's  mistress  waits  to  see  her  unearthly  chieftain  ride  his 
white  horse  out  of  the  blue  depths  of  the  Killarney  lakes,  and  the 
young  poet  by  the  coast  of  Arranmore  to  see  "Hy  Brysail  or  the 
Enchanted  Island,  the  Paradise  of  the  Pagan  Irish."  Then  there  are 
patriotic  poems  of  modern  times,  such  as  that  on  Emmet: 

Oh!  breathe  not  his  name,  let  it  sleep  in  the  shade, 
Where  cold  and  unhonored  his  relics  are  laid; 

earnest  love  songs,  such  as 

Go  where  glory  waits  thee, 
But  while  fame  elates  thee, 
Oh!  still  remember  me; 

and  lyrics  in  more  playful  vein,  such  as  ^The  time  I've  lost  in  woo- 
ing." It  may  be  that  when  we  compare  all  this  with  Burns  we  feel 
the  effect  of  Moore's  ^'boudoir  education";  it  may  be  that  his  Irish 
patriotism  loved  the  sound  of  the  harp  better  than  that  of  the  bullet; 
but  the  great  musician  is  heard  in  his  lyrics  even  if  the  great  man 
is  not,  and  the  witchery  of  song  is  there. 

Campbell,  unlike  Moore,  was  genuine  in  both  his  neo-classicism 
and  his  ultra-romanticism.  For  the  student  of  literary  currents  he 
presents  a  marked  dualism  in  taste  and  creative  work;  and  the  roots 
of  this  dualism  can  be  traced  in  his  early  life.  As  in  the  case  of  his 
great  fellow  Scotchman,  many  influences  of  ancestry  and  tradition 
inclined  him  toward  the  medieval-romantic.  He  was  lineally  de- 
scended from  the  first  Norman  lord  of  Lochawe.  His  mother  was 
intimately  acquainted  with  the  traditional  songs  of  the  Highlands, 
especially  Argyllshire.  Beattie  tells  us  that  "the  ballad  poetry  of 
Scotland  was  familiar  to  his  ear,  long  before  he  could  comprehend 
its  meaning."  In  youth  he  was  an  admirer  of  "Ossian,"  and  wrote  an 
Ossianic  poem,  "Morven  and  Fillan."  At  the  age  of  seventeen  he 
spent  some  time  among  the  romantic  Hebrides,  and  before  going 
there  was,  according  to  Beattie,  "already  familiar  with  their  feudal 

[  141  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

history  and  poetic  legends."  Here  Campbell  wrote:  "The  Point  of 
Callioch  commands  a  magnificent  prospect  of  thirteen  Hebrid- 
islands,  among  which  are  Staffa  and  Icolmkill,  which  I  visited  with 
enthusiasm."  Yet  there  were  distinct  counteracting  influences.  Of 
his  father,  whom  he  resembled,  the  son  wrote: 

His  soul's  proud  instinct  sought  not  to  en  joy- 
Romantic  fictions,  like  a  minstrel  boy. 

The  first  poets  with  whom  young  Campbell  became  familiar  in  Eng- 
lish were  Pope,  Gray,  and  Goldsmith,  whose  influence  can  be  clearly 
traced  in  his  own  work.  At  the  university  he  was  "the  Pope  of 
Glasgow,"  and  Horace  was  his  favorite  lyrist.  The  two  streams 
mingle  in  some  of  his  early  poetry,  where  the  most  romantic  nature 
worship  is  voiced  in  the  time-worn  couplet.  At  Mull  in  1795,  with 
his  eye  on  the  object,  he  described 

The  dark  blue  rocks,  in  barren  grandeur  piled; 
The  cuckoo,  sighing  to  the  pensive  wild. 

At  the  age  of  twenty  he  wrote: 

I  loved  to  trace  the  wave-worn  shore,  and  view 
Romantic  Nature  in  her  wildest  hue. 
There,  as  I  linger'd  on  the  vaulted  steep, 
lona's  towers  toll'd  mournful  o'er  the  deep; 
Till  all  my  bosom  owned  a  sacred  mood. 
And  blessed  the  wild  delight  of  solitude. 

In  the  very  year  which  produced  the  half  neo-classic  "Pleasures 
of  Hope"  he  planned  a  medieval  poem  on  William  Tell,  which  was 
never  published.  Three  years  before  "The  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel" 
was  printed,  he  felt  the  medieval  thrill  of  Melrose  Abbey.  Is  it  any 
wonder  that  the  fellow  countryman  of  Scott  and  the  London  asso- 
ciate of  Rogers  should  be  at  once  the  leading  defender  of  Pope  in 
1819  and  the  poet  of  "Invincible  romantic  Scotia's  shore"? 

The  highly  romantic  nature  and  perhaps  also  the  poetic  merit 
of  Campbell's  medieval  poems  have  been  too  little  noticed.  "O'Con- 
nor's Child"  and  "Reullura"  introduce  the  ancient  Innisfail  and 
"the  dark-attired  Culdee"  of  our  recent  Celtic  revival.  The  wizard 

[  142  ] 


THE  LONDON  SOCIETY  POETS 

who  warns  Lochiel  is  of  the  same  type  as  Brian  in  "The  Lady  of 
the  Lake."  "Glenara"  deals  with  the  same  story  as  Joanna  Baillie's 
"Family  Legend";  "Earl  March  looked  on  his  dying  child"  with 
the  same  tradition  as  Scott's  "Maid  of  Neidpath";  "The  Brave 
Roland"  with  that  of  Schiller's  "Knight  of  Toggenburg."  The 
German  medieval  strain  occurs  also  in  "The  Ritter  Ban." 

Luttrell  produced  nothing  of  merit  in  any  romantic  vein;  Spencer 
only  two  short  poems,  his  version  of  "Lenore"  and  his  pathetic 
medieval  ballad  of  "Beth-Gelert."  Rogers's  "Jacqueline,"  written  in 
Scott's  metre  and  located  in  the  France  of  Louis  Le  Grand,  is  as 
near  to  the  medieval-romantic  as  Rogers  ever  came  successfully,  but 
not  very  near.  Like  much  of  that  author's  work  it  has  a  considerable 
degree  of  negative  charm. 

True  lovers  of  Byron  will  prefer  to  think  of  him  as  the  great 
lonely  misanthrope  of  later  years;  the  student  of  public  psychology 
is  attracted  to  his  early  career  as  that  of  a  popular  phenomenon  in 
literary  history.  From  1812  to  at  least  181 8  Scott  was  dethroned; 
and  the  supremacy  of  Byron  not  only  in  number  of  readers  but  also 
in  critical  applause  was  unquestioned.  Immediately  upon  pub- 
lication ten  thousand  copies  of  "The  Corsair"  were  sold,  almost  as 
many  as  were  marketed  of  Scott's  "Lord  of  the  Isles"  in  a  decade 
and  a  half,  more  than  would  be  sold  in  a  century  of  a  separately 
printed  "Excursion."  Yet  these  three  poems  encountered  the  same 
public,  "The  Excursion"  appearing  in  the  same  year  as  "The  Cor- 
sair," and  "The  Lord  of  the  Isles"  a  few  months  later. 

As  compared  with  his  predecessor  on  the  popular  throne,  Byron  •^ 
showed  both  likenesses  and  differences.  Like  Scott  he  was  virile 
and  vigorous,  yet  with  an  occasional  sauce  of  sentimentality;  like 
Scott  he  brought  in  a  wealth  of  picturesque  new  details  without  ; 
making  too  exacting  demands  on  his  reader's  power  to  think;  the  \ 
narratives  of  both,  though  not  always  well  constructed,  moved  with  i 
rapidity  and  spirit.  In  some  or  all  of  these  respects  both  differed 
markedly  from  the  great  unpopular  poets,  Wordsworth,  Coleridge, 
Keats,  and  Shelley.  Byron's  was  the  reign  of  Orientalism,  Scott's 
that  of  medievalism;  but  both  types  appealed  to  the  same  traits 
in  the  general  reader,  the  love  of  novelty,  adventure,  and  local  color. 

"  [143  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

Byron  himself  felt  this.  "I  shall  never  forget,"  he  wrote,  "the  singu- 
lar scene  on  entering  Tepaleen  [in  Albania]  at  five  in  the  afternoon, 
as  the  sun  was  going  down.  It  brought  to  my  mind  (with  some 
change  of  dress,  however)  Scott's  description  of  Branksome  Castle 
in  his  'Lay,'  and  the  feudal  system."  In  1813  he  wrote  to  Moore, 
in  words  that  may  have  helped  to  produce  "Lalla  Rookh":  "Stick 
to  the  East; — the  oracle,  Stael,  told  me  it  was  the  only  poetical 
policy.  The  North,  South,  and  West  have  all  been  exhausted;  but 
from  the  East  we  have  nothing  but  Southey's  unsaleables."  Scott  no 
doubt  wrote  from  longer  and  deeper  experience  in  describing  the 
wars  of  his  own  countrymen  and  ancestors;  yet  he  also  in  the 
Waverley  novels  turned  to  other  countries  and  even  to  the  East 
when  he  felt  that  his  public  was  growing  tired  of  Scotland.  In  all 
these  respects  "The  Bride  of  Abydos"  and  "The  Corsair"  were  the 
logical  successors  of  "Marmion." 

-The  fundamental  difference  was  that  the  poetry  of  Scott  was 
wholesome  and  colored  by  reason,  that  of  Byron  morbid  and  colored 
by  passion.  Carlyle  divided  all  romantic  writing  into  Goetzism  and  ^ 
Wertherism,  the  literature  of  medieval  adventure  and  the  literature 
of  melancholy  subjectivity.  As  Scott's  popular  reign  had  been  that 
of  Goetzism,  so  Byron's  was  that  of  Wertherism.  It  is  easy  to  see 
how  this  should  have  a  wide  appeal.  In  Germany  "The  Sorrows 
of  Werther"  had  chimed  in  so  well  with  the  mood  of  the  rising 
generation  that  melancholy  and  suicide  became  favorite  recreations 
of  young  gentlemen.  Everybody  read  it.  When  Richter  wishes  to 
emphasize  Fraulein  Thienette's  utter  ignorance  of  books,  he  tells 
us  that  "in  literature  she  does  not  even  know  Werther."  That  was 
equivalent  to  a  dozen  exclamation  points.  Byron's  heroes  do  not 
commit  suicide,  that  final  step  being  more  in  harmony  with  German 
thoroughness  than  with  Anglo-Saxon  practicality;  but  they  have 
the  same  "pale  cast  of  thought"  and  unhappy  love  affairs.  The 
Giaour,  like  Werther,  has  his  life  blasted  by  his  hopeless  affection 
for  another  man's  wife;  Selim  by  his  hopeless  attachment  to  another 
man's  fiancee;  and  Conrad  (who  is  probably  the  same  as  Lara) 
having  lost  his  own  love  by  tuberculosis,  devotes  the  rest  of  his  life 
to  melancholy  and  adultery.  It  seems  hardly  fair  to  give  such  a 

[  144  ] 


THE  LONDON  SOCIETY  POETS 

summary  of  poems  which  contain  many  admirable  passages;  but, 
though  the  flowers  of  poetry  are  there,  they  are  certainly  twined 
on  a  very  rotten  trellis.  What  is  bad,  however,  probably  helped  the 
sale  as  much  as  what  is  good.  Byron  was  the  first  great  narrative 
poet  in  a  century  to  make  sex  passion  a  leading  motif;  with  the 
exception  of  Burns  and  Moore,  almost  the  only  great  poet  during 
that  time  to  handle  it  in  any  form  more  vivid  than  stereotyped 
verses  of  compliment.  The  love  affairs  of  Scott's  poems  are  obviously 
dragged  in  with  great  reluctance  and  almost  painfully  calm  and 
respectable.  For  us,  who  have  grown  sated  even  with  Swinburne's 
"Laus  Veneris"  and  the  revived  Elizabethan  dramatists,  it  is  hard 
to  realize  how  much  novelty  this  element  had  in  "The  Giaour"  and 
its  fellows. 

The  cold  in  clime  are  cold  in  blood, 

Their  love  can  scarce  deserve  the  name; 

But  mine  was  like  a  lava  flood 
That  boils  in  ^Etna's  breast  of  flame.  ... 

I  knew  but  to  obtain  or  die. 

I  die — but  first  I  have  possess 'd, 

And  come  what  may,  I  have  been  blest. 

We  suspect  that  Byron  had  a  larger  percentage  of  women  among 
his  readers  than  Scott. 

There  is,  however,  another  element  in  these  early  poems  which 
appears  to  have  made  an  equally  far-reaching  and  much  nobler 
appeal.  We  meet  it  continually  in  the  first  two  cantos  of  "Childe 
Harold"  and  fitfully  in  the  "Oriental  Tales."  It  is  a  feeling  for  the 
romance  of  geography  and  history,  a  realization  that  earth  is  wide 
and  old,  crowded  with  wonders,  opportunities,  and  memories.  All 
this  had  been  kindled  into  genuine  fire  by  the  poet's  travels,  and 
weakened  but  not  destroyed  by  his  subsequent  life  in  London. 

Oh!   yet — for  there  my  steps  have  been: 
These  feet  have  press'd  the  sacred  shore, 

he  cries  of  the  Troad  in  one  of  the  few  good  passages  in  "Abydos." 
The  death  agony  of  the  Giaour  smacks  of  melodrama,  but  not  the 
death  agony  of  Greece  at  the  beginning  of  the  same  poem.  Would 

[  145  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

not  any  of  us  give  all  the  fighting  and  love-making  in  "The  Corsair" 
for  the  noble  lines  that  open  the  third  canto,  when 

On  old  Aegina's  rock  and  Idra's  isle 
The  god  of  gladness  sheds  his  parting  smile; 
O'er  his  own  regions  lingering,  loves  to  shine, 
Though  there  his  altars  are  no  more  divine? 

Modern  realists  feel  no  interest  whatever  in  that  English  Werther 
known  as  "Childe  Harold,"  but  a  great  deal  in  the  battlefields  and 
bullfights  of  Spain  by  which  he  leads  us.  Still  more  on  Hellenic  soil 
he  makes  us  realize  that 

Where'er  we  tread  'tis  haunted,  holy  ground. 

Madame  Girardin,  after  reading  the  Spanish  travels  of  Gautier 
asked  him,  "But  Theo,  are  there  no  Spaniards  in  Spain?"  One  could 
wish  that  there  had  been  no  Turks  in  Byron's  Turkey  and  no  Greeks 
for  him  in  Greece,  so  far  is  his  poetry  of  description  and  association 
above  the  crude  melodrama  of  his  early  heroes  and  heroines.  The 
books  of  travel  that  were  poured  out  during  the  late  eighteenth  and 
early  nineteenth  century  were  legion  in  number.  The  English  people, 
shut  in  with  their  own  thoughts  so  long  through  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, veritably  hungered  and  thirsted  after  the  new  and  remote;  and 
that  spirit  not  only  helped  to  make  "Childe  Harold"  but  also  helped 
to  make  its  audience  after  it  was  printed. 

When  the  popular  dictatorship  passed  from  "Rokeby"  to  "Childe 
Harold"  it  was  not  wholly  a  transfer  of  power  from  the  Scotch  to 
the  southern  spirit.  Byron's  father  was  English,  but  his  mother  a 
Highlander;  and  his  early  boyhood  had  been  passed  at  Aberdeen 
between  the  mountains  and  the  sea.  His  romantic  narratives  have 
often  the  lowland  love  of  dare-devil  adventure  so  common  in  Hogg, 
Leyden,  and  Scott,  so  rare  in  Keats,  Coleridge,  and  Shelley.  A  touch 
of  Celtic  Highland  blood,  the  blood  of  "Ossian,"  may  have  encour- 
aged the  Wertherism  in  him.  He  declares  in  "Don  Juan": 

I  am  half  a  Scot  by  birth,  and  bred 
A  whole  one,  and  my  heart  flies  to  my  head, — 

[  146  ] 


THE  LONDON  SOCIETY  POETS 

As  "Auld  Lang  Syne"  brings  Scotland,  one  and  all, 
Scotch  plaids,  Scotch  snoods,  the  blue  hills,  and 
clear  streams. 

The  Dee,  the  Don,  Balgounie's  brig's  black  wall, 

All  my  boy  feelings,  all  my  gentler  dreams.  .  .  . 

I  "scotched  not  kill'd"  the  Scotchman  in  my  blood. 
And  love  the  land  of  "mountain  and  of  flood." 

After  the  departure  of  Byron  in  1816  our  interest  in  the  London 
society  poets  begins  to  wane.  Moore's  "Lalla  Rookh"  was  already 
in  the  works,  and  came  out  the  next  year.  Henceforward  this  little 
fellowship  of  writers  produced  nothing  which  even  in  the  judgment 
of  its  own  age  was  supremely  good.  Moore  turned  out  clever  society 
verse,  and  his  flabby  "Loves  of  the  Angels,"  which  sold  on  the 
strength  of  his  former  reputation;  Rogers  his  "Italy,"  which, 
though  not  bad  poetry,  sold  on  the  strengtJi  of  its  magnificent  bind- 
ings rather  than  its  merits.  In  "Lalla  Rookh"  the  Orientalism  of 
Byron  continued  its  popular  reign.  Though  the  poem  has  more  good 
passages  than  our  own  age  seems  willing  to  admit,  unquestionably 
much  of  its  rich  carving  is  only  stucco.  Nevertheless,  such  as  it  was, 
seven  editions  of  it  were  called  for  within  a  year,  and  Longman  over 
twenty  years  later  thought  it  "the  cream  of  the  copyrights."  Among 
other  languages  it  was  very  soon  translated  into  Persian;  and  a 
German  version  was  made  by  the  romantic  novelist  Fouque,  the 
author  of  "Undine."  The  Prince  Royal  of  Prussia  wrote  that  he 
always  slept  with  a  copy  of  it  under  his  pillow.  Meanwhile  Keats 
and  Shelley  were  beginning  to  publish,  to  the  detriment  of  both 
pocketbook  and  mental  tranquillity. 

We  cannot  pass  over  the  latter  years  of  this  group  without  a 
word  concerning  their  connection  with  the  American  author  Wash- 
ington Irving.  He  came  to  England  in  181 5,  and  from  then  until 
1 81 8  lived  mainly  at  Liverpool,  after  that  either  in  London  or  on 
the  continent  at  places  frequented  by  English  writers.  Soon  after 
landing  he  formed  a  cordial  friendship  with  Campbell,  whose 
brother  had  been  his  friend  in  America.  In  1820  he  met  Moore  in 
France.  Before  long  the  two  authors  were  on  such  an  affectionate 

[  147  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

footing  that  Irving  wrote:  "Scarce  a  day  passes  without  our  seeing 
each  other";  and  some  months  later  Moore  introduced  him  to  the 
Hollands,  with  whom  thereafter  he  frequently  dined.  In  1822  at 
Lady  Spencer's  he  first  met  Rogers,  and  often  afterward  break- 
fasted with  him.  He  knew  W.  R.  Spencer  and  apparently  Luttrell, 
who  was  reported  to  him  as  "warm  in  your  praises."  With  the  excep- 
tion of  Scott,  all  English  authors  who  were  intimate  friends  of  his 
belonged  to  the  London  society  poets.  In  this  fact  there  is  nothing 
remarkable.  They  were  the  only  poets  who  combined  geographical 
propinquity  to  Irving  with  an  unquestioned  reputation.  It  is  worth 
noting,  however,  that  that  same  dualism  of  style  which  characterizes 
the  poetry  of  these  writers  is  found  in  Irving's  prose  of  this  period, 
for  as  they  imitated  Pope,  so  he  imitated  Addison;  and  as  they 
alternated  or  mixed  the  early  eighteenth-century  manner  with  the 
supernatural  and  romantic,  so  did  he.  There  would  seem  to  have 
been  a  natural  affinity  of  tastes,  which  aided  in  drawing  them 
together. 

The  London  society  poets  were  all  exceedingly  popular,  with  the 
exception  of  Scott  and  Crabbe  the  only  consistently  popular  poets 
of  the  romantic  generation.  That  feeling  of  sympathy  with  the 
public  trend  of  thought,  which  conduces  so  much  to  popularity — a 
feeling  so  glaringly  absent  in  Wordsworth  and  Blake — may  have 
aided  in  drawing  them  to  the  metropolis.  They  lived  in  an  age  very 
different  from  that  of  Pope;  in  many  ways  they  wrote  very  differ- 
ently; yet  more  than  we  have  realized,  the  wits  of  Queen  Anne  were 
akin  to  those  later  wits  of  Holland  House  and  of  Rogers'  breakfast 
table. 


[  148  ] 


PART  II 

ENGLISH  LITERATURE   FROM    THE   DOWNFALL   OF 

NAPOLEON  TO  THE  RISE  OF  TENNYSON 

(1816-1830) 


CHAPTER  VII 

The  Scotch  Era  of  Prose y  1 8 1 4- 1 8  3  o 

From  1795  to  1814  Caledonian  literature  had  been  almost  wholly 
poetry,  even  the  erudition  of  Ley  den  and  Scott  venting  itself  in  the 
editing  and  annotation  of  verse,  rather  than  in  separate  treatises. 
Any  leanings  toward  prose  on  the  part  of  authors  north  of  the  Tweed 
were  promptly  discouraged  by  publishers,  who  evidently  knew  their 
public.  Scott  in  1810  was  frightened  by  Ballantyne  into  abandoning 
his  unfinished  fragment  of  "Waverley";  Gait's  "Annals  of  the 
Parish"  was  rejected  by  Constable  with  the  remark  that  "Scottish 
novels  would  not  do";  and  Susan  Ferrier's  "Marriage,"  planned  in 
1 810,  was  not  published  until  eight  years  later. 

After  1 814  the  significant  achievements  of  both  major  and  minor 
northern  writers  were  in  prose.  Such  poems  as  did  appear,  with 
the  exception  of  Lockhart's  renderings  from  the  Spanish,  were  weak, 
belated  survivals  of  tendencies  already  moribund.  Scott's  "Harold 
the  Dauntless,"  in  which  the  sun  of  "Marmion"  went  down  forever, 
had  been  mainly  composed  long  before  publication;  Hogg's  inter- 
minable "Queen  Hynde"  should  not  have  been  composed  at  all. 
"Waverley,"  "Marriage,"  and  "The  Annals  of  the  Parish"  were 
drawn  from  the  dusty  slumber  of  years  and  found  an  eager  public 
loudly  calling  for  successors. 

One  chief  cause  for  this  revival  of  prose  was  obviously  the  triumph 
of  the  Waverley  novels,  which  led  the  way  and  made  every  pub- 
lisher hope  to  find  a  new  Scott  among  his  young  prose  contributors. 
Another  reason  was  that  the  Scotch  vein  of  modern  poetry — so 
much  more  narrow,  so  much  less  varied  and  Protean  than  the  Eng- 
lish— was  worn  out;  and  the  northern  writers  must  now  utter  prose 
or  nothing.  The  influence  of  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge,  which  was 
leavening  so  much  poetry  south  of  the  Tweed,  counted  for  nothing 

[  151  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

beyond  that  river.  Even  the  praise  of  John  Wilson  could  not  make 
his  countrymen  respond.  In  1818,  according  to  Blackwood's,  the 
poems  of  Wordsworth,  though  highly  regarded  by  the  English,  were 
known  to  the  Scotch  only  through  extracts  and  reviews;  and  as  for 
the  verses  of  Coleridge,  ''the  reading  public  of  Scotland  are  in  gen- 
eral ignorant  that  any  such  poems  exist."  Also  the  whole  British 
public  after  181 8  began  to  be  sated  with  their  long  banquet  of 
poetry;  and  the  departure  from  verse,  though  much  more  marked 
in  Edinburgh  than  in  London,  was  symptomatic  of  growing  tenden- 
cies in  both  countries. 

The  Scotch  flood  of  prose  divides  into  three  closely  related  cur- 
rents: that  of  the  Waverley  novels;  that  of  Blackwood's  Magazine; 
and  that  of  the  minor  novelists.  The  writers  involved  were  generally 
in  personal  contact  with  each  other;  common  elements  as  well  as 
divergencies  can  be  found  in  their  writings;  and  they  may  be  con- 
sidered as  forming  together  a  fairly  distinct  literary  eddy. 

Scott  led  the  way  with  his  novels;  and  unquestionably  much  of 
the  work  produced  by  minors  around  him  was  the  backwash  from 
that  great  main  flood.  The  swarming  crowd  of  his  imitators  had 
temporarily  frightened  him  away  from  remote  ages  without  destroy- 
ing in  him  that  love  for  an  antique  atmosphere  which  was  part  of 
his  being.  So  from  1814  to  1819  come  novels  which  are  located  in 
comparatively  modern  times,  but  over  which  the  spirit  of  a  remote 
past  hangs  often  like  a  transforming  haze.  It  was  precisely  this 
quality  which  James  Ballantyne  criticised  in  ''Waverley":  "Con- 
sidering that  'sixty  years  since'  only  leads  us  back  to  the  year  1750, 
a  period  when  our  fathers  were  alive  and  merry,  it  seems  to  me  that 
the  air  of  antiquity  diffused  over  the  character  is  rather  too  great 
to  harmonize  with  the  time."  But  the  "air  of  antiquity"  was  pre- 
cisely what  Scott  did  not  desire  to  give  up;  in  the  year  when 
"Waverley"  was  printed  he  published  his  "Essay  on  Chivalry." 
The  same  spell  from  antiquity — or  from  Ann  Radcliffe — ^hangs  over 
the  eighteenth-century  events  of  "Guy  Mannering." 

The  roar  of  the  ocean  was  now  near  and  full,  and  the  moon,  which 
began  to  make  her  appearance,  gleamed  on  a  turreted  and  apparently  a 

[  152  ] 


THE  SCOTCH  ERA  OF  PROSE 

ruined  mansion  of  considerable  extent.  Mannering  fixed  his  eyes  upon  it 

with  a  disconsolate  sensation. 

"Why,  my  little  fellow,"  he  said,  "this  is  a  ruin,  not  a  house." 

"Ah,  but  the  lairds  lived  there  langsyne;  that's  Elangowan  Auld  Place. 

There's  a  hantle  bogles  about  it;  but  ye  needna  be  feared,  I  never  saw  ony 

mysell,  and  we're  just  at  the  door  o'  the  New  Place." 

This  atmosphere  appears  often  in  even  the  most  realistic  of  Scott's 
early  novels.  "The  Antiquary"  is  "near  the  end  of  the  eighteenth 
century,"  "The  Black  Dwarf"  at  the  beginning  of  it,  "Old  Mortality" 
at  the  close  of  the  seventeenth.  "Rob  Roy,"  like  "The  Black  Dwarf," 
is  "early  in  the  eighteenth  century."  "The  Heart  of  Midlothian" 
begins  with  the  Porteus  riot  of  1737.  The  unfortunate  original  for 
the  bride  of  Lammermoor  died  in  1669;  the  events  of  "A  Legend 
of  Montrose"  occurred  about  twenty  years  farther  back.  No  one  of 
these  early  novels  antedated  the  outbreak  of  the  Civil  War  in  1642. 
Yet  in  every  one,  either  intermittently  or  consistently,  occurs  the 
glamour  of  antiquarian  romance  or  Gothic  mystery  and  decay. 
Men  dig  for  treasure  in  moonlit  ruins,  and  find  it  at  last  under 
a  tomb  of  the  twelfth  century.  The  Black  Dwarf  moves  in  the 
shadowy  background  of  his  story  as  mysteriously  as  Schedoni  in 
Mrs.  Radcliffe's  "Italian."  It  is  not  for  nothing  that  the  forty-second 
chapter  of  "Old  Mortality"  is  prefaced  by  a  quotation  from 
Spenser.  Something  of  his  medieval  atmosphere,  of  terrors  more 
than  human,  hangs  around  the  outlawed  Burley,  haunted  by  his 
guilty  conscience  in  his  lonely  cavern,  where  "His  figure,  dimly 
ruddied  by  the  light  of  the  red  charcoal,  seemed  that  of  a  fiend  in 
the  lurid  atmosphere  of  Pandemonium."  Feudalism,  adventure,  and 
the  misty  mountains  that  had  nursed  the  Ossianic  poems  of  Mac- 
pherson,  play  their  part  in  "Rob  Roy,"  and  "A  Legend  of  Mont- 
rose." Jeanie  Deans  is  the  captive  of  robbers,  and  a  whiff  from  the 
dungeons  of  Ann  Radcliffe  breathes  often  from  the  lips  of  the  de- 
mented Madge  Wildfire:  "I  may  weel  say  that  I  am  come  out  of 
the  City  of  Destruction,  for  my  mother  is  Mrs.  Bat's-eyes,  that 
dwells  at  Deadman's  Corner."  Wolf's  Crag  in  "The  Bride  of  Lam- 
mermoor" is  like  a  medieval  ruin  on  the  Rhine,  and  the  dying  image 
of  feudalism  seems  personified  in  the  last  lord  of  "the  Ravens  wood 

[  153  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

family,  whose  ancient  grandeur  and  portentous  authority,  credulity 
had  graced  with  so  many  superstitious  attributes." 

The  spread  and  degradation  of  medievalism  not  only  led  Scott 
to  disguise,  and  in  part  suppress,  his  own  enthusiasm  for  it  during 
the  half  decade  discussed;  but  it  also  made  him  mine  extensively 
for  three  or  four  years  another  vein — equally  Scotch,  equally 
national,  worked  before  by  Allan  Ramsay  and  Burns  and  many  a 
minor  north  of  the  Tweed — the  vein  of  broad  humorous  or  tren- 
chant realism.  Lockhart  justly  pointed  out  that  "The  Antiquary" 
is  "in  all  its  humbler  and  softer  scenes,  the  transcript  of  actual 
Scottish  life,  as  observed  by  the  man  himself."  So  is  the  touching 
story  of  Jeanie  Deans  founded  on  fact.  After  1818,  however,  this 
element,  though  fitfully  revived,  becomes  much  more  rare.  With 
the  publication  of  Susan  Ferrier's  "Marriage"  in  that  year  began 
an  inundation  of  minor  Scotch  novels,  mainly  harshly  or  humor- 
ously realistic,  which  probably  made  Scott  feel  crowded  by  his 
imitators  out  of  the  field  of  realism  as  he  had  previously  been 
crowded  by  them  out  of  the  field  of  martial  antiquity.  Like  many 
another  popular  author,  he  made  his  life  a  series  of  doublings  and 
twists  to  avoid  the  pursuing  hounds  that  his  own  popularity  had 
summoned. 

Hence  in  181 9,  in  "Ivanhoe,"  he  swung  back  to  the  Middle  Ages 
of  his  early  love,  but  to  a  past  that  was  foreign  instead  of  Scotch. 
"Am  glad  you  find  anything  to  entertain  you  in  Ivanhoe,'  "  wrote 
the  author  to  Lady  Louisa  Stuart.  "Novelty  is  what  this  giddy-paced 
time  demands  imperiously,  and  I  certainly  studied  as  much  as  I 
could  to  get  out  of  the  old  beaten  track,  leaving  those  who  like  to 
keep  the  road,  which  I  have  rutted  pretty  well."  Scott  returned  to 
modern  life  temporarily  in  "St.  Ronan's  Well"  and  to  a  not  very 
remote  epoch  in  two  or  three  other  cases;  but  the  dominant  note 
through  the  Waver  ley  novels  from  now  on  was  that  of  antiquity, 
no  longer  the  past  of  a  single  country  but  the  past  of  Europe.  "The 
Abbot"  is  in  Scotland,  "The  Betrothed"  on  the  edge  of  Wales, 
"Ivanhoe"  in  England,  "Quentin  Durward"  in  France;  "Anne  of 
Geierstein"  leads  into  Switzerland,  "Count  Robert"  to  Byzantium, 
and  "The  Talisman"  to  Palestine.  Eyes  flash  fire  through  visored 

[  154  ] 


THE  SCOTCH  ERA  OF  PROSE 

helmets;  fair  ladies  lean  from  Gothic  balconies  to  fasten  letters  on 
their  lovers'  lances;  young  maidens  wander  disguised  as  pilgrims; 
and  the  Norman  spear  encounters  the  Welsh  club  under  the  battle- 
ments of  a  border  castle.  This  continual  handling  of  periods  remote 
and  vaguely  known  could  not  help  but  have  a  devitalizing  effect  on 
the  author's  work.  Antaeus  was  deliberately  putting  himself  on 
stilts.  Most  of  the  later  novels,  "The  Betrothed,"  "Anne  of  Geier- 
stein,"  "Count  Robert  of  Paris,"  and  "Castle  Dangerous,"  show 
the  lack  of  bracing  contact  with  mother  earth,  and  are  full  of  con- 
ventionalized pseudo-romance,  dangerously  akin,  at  its  worst,  to 
that  of  Letitia  Landon.  "The  Talisman,"  the  last  true  masterpiece, 
was  written  immediately  following  the  death  of  Byron;  after  that 
for  both  Scott  and  Great  Britain  the  twilight  of  pseudo-romanticism 
gathered  fast. 

Considered  as  permanent  literature,  the  Waverley  novels  easily 
overshadow  all  other  Scottish  prose  of  their  time.  In  many  ways 
also  they  were  independent  of  that  prose;  where  suggestions  are 
borrowed  the  minor  is  almost  always  the  borrower.  Yet  great  and 
small  writer  alike  grew  out  of  a  common  environment.  Even  to-day, 
says  Mrs.  Oliphant,  "Edinburgh  preserves  a  very  distinct  stamp  of 
her  own;  but  in  those  days  she  was  as  individual  and  distinct  as 
Paris  or  Vienna."  It  was  one  of  Lockhart's  amusements  to  "bring 
these  Southerners  into  close  communication  with  a  set  of  your 
Northern  lights  .  .  .  make  them  discuss  the  differences  between 
England  and  Scotland  in  various  points  of  manners,  feelings,  educa- 
tion, etc."  Constable,  the  publisher  of  Scott,  had  given  northern 
literature  a  marked  impetus  by  his  financial  encouragement.  "Ten, 
even  twenty  guineas  a  sheet  for  a  review,"  says  Lord  Cockburn, 
"£2000  or  £3000  for  a  single  poem,  and  £1000  for  two  philosophical 
dissertations,  drew  authors  out  of  their  dens,  and  made  Edinburgh 
a  literary  mart  famous  with  strangers,  and  the  pride  of  its  own 
citizens." 

It  was  in  an  atmosphere  like  this  that  Blackwood's  Magazine  had 
birth  in  181 7.  Though  it  later  took  on  a  cosmopolitan  character,  it 
was  originally  Scotch  in  parentage  and  temper.  It  and  The  Edin- 
burgh Review,  says  Mrs.  Oliphant,  "were  both  Berserkers,  wild 

[  155  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

riders  of  the  North,  incautious,  daring,  irresponsible,"  as  contrasted 
with  the  harsh  but  eminently  respectable  Quarterly  at  London.  Like 
a  genuine  moss-trooper  Blackwood's  pricked  hard  and  fast  at  all 
its  literary  enemies,  and  in  dealing  with  those  whom  it  liked  was  as 
reluctant  to  spoil  good  sport  as  Sir  Lucius  O'Trigger.  "Though 
averse  to  being  cut  up  myself,  I  like  to  abuse  my  friends,"  wrote 
Wilson  in  a  typical  mood.  Even  Scott  was  once  attacked,  apparently 
in  a  spirit  of  sheer  bravado,  by  those  who  must  have  been  his  ad- 
mirers. Maginn  wrote  to  Blackwood  in  the  same  militant  temper, 
"In  London  you  are  blamed  for  attacking  obscure  Londoners,  most 
particularly  Hazlitt.  He  is  really  too  insignificant  an  animal." 

Yet  this  side  of  Maga,  so  obvious,  so  often  dwelt  on,  is  not  the 
only  important  one.  She  meant  to  be,  and  in  many  ways  she  was, 
not  the  enemy  but  the  friend  of  authors.  With  the  exception  of  The 
London  Magazine^  no  other  periodical  contained  a  greater  wealth 
of  literary  matter.  Its  reviews,  though  at  times  monumental  mis- 
judgments,  are  on  the  whole  less  unrighteous  than  one  might  think. 
We  hear  much  about  its  venomous  attacks  on  Keats,  who  did  not 
deserve  them,  and  on  Leigh  Hunt  and  Cornelius  Webb — who  did. 
Why  do  we  not  hear  as  often  of  Blackwood's  as  the  first  influential 
champion  for  Wordsworth,  as  often  of  "the  long  and  triumphant 
battle  which  Maga  has  fought  in  defence  of  that  gentleman's  char- 
acter and  genius"?  If  it  maligned  Shelley  after  he  had  become 
associated  with  the  "Cockneys,"  it  was  the  one  great  magazine  which 
before  that  had  amply  recognized  his  powers.  If  it  dealt  roughly  with 
Coleridge's  "Biographia  Liter  aria,"  it  had  generous  reviews  for  him 
later.  It  spoke  with  justice  and  discernment  of  Milman  and  Procter, 
of  Crabbe,  and  of  Byron's  "Don  Juan."  All  this  is  different  enough 
from  the  well-bred  indifference  of  Murray,  who  wrote  to  the  editors: 
"You  have  unfortunately  too  much  of  the  Lake  School,  for  which 
no  interest  is  felt  here." 

Besides  reviews  and  political  articles,  Blackwood's  published  a 
number  of  poems  and  novels  of  some  merit,  as  well  as  papers  on  the 
literature  of  Italy,  Germany,  and  Scandinavia.  Its  two  chief  monu- 
ments, however,  are  the  "Tales  from  Blackwood"  and  the  "Noctes 
Ambrosianae."  Most  of  the  "Tales"  appeared  in  two  annual  waves, 

[  156  ] 


THE  SCOTCH  ERA  OF  PROSE 

the  first  in  1821,  the  second  in  1829,  with  a  few  scattering  between. 
Without  being  great,  they  are  ingenious  and  readable,  and  a  useful 
index  as  to  popular  taste.  Gothic  mystery  and  terror  brood  over 
nearly  all.  Some  are  tales  of  the  sea.  The  Flying  Dutchman  sends 
his  last  message  home.  A  tragedy  of  jealousy  and  murder  takes  place 
on  a  floating  beacon.  A  disabled  ship  hangs  for  hours  at  anchor  over 
transparent  water  in  which  dozens  of  her  dead,  who  have  just  had 
sea  burial,  can  be  clearly  seen.  "A  large  block  happened  to  fall  over- 
board, and  the  agitation  which  it  occasioned  in  the  sea  produced  an 
apparent  augmentation  of  their  number,  and  a  horrible  distortion 
of  their  limbs  and  countenances."  A  negro  pirate  captain  is  a  noble 
villain,  a  link  between  Byron's  Conrad  and  Hugo's  Bug-Jargal. 
*^An  Adventure  in  the  Northwest  Territory"  invades  the  "forest 
primeval"  of  Chateaubriand.  There  are  two  stories  which  may  have 
furnished  suggestion  to  the  gloomy  ingenuity  of  Poe,  one  in  which 
a  man  is  imprisoned  under  a  gigantic  swinging  bell,  another  in  which 
a  victim  is  crushed  by  a  gradually  contracting  dungeon.  The  Italian 
current  is  represented  by  "Di  Vasari"  and  "Colonna  the  Painter." 
In  the  former  the  lover  of  another  man's  wife  is  imprisoned  and  left 
to  die  in  her  chamber,  as  in  Balzac's  "Grande  Breteche,"  only  by 
the  wife's  act  instead  of  the  husband's.  The  latter  is  a  story  of  love, 
revenge,  and  art  enthusiasm  deciphered  from  a  worm-eaten  manu- 
script of  the  Radcliffe  type.  The  doppelgdngerei  of  the  German 
Romantiker  is  imported  in  other  stories,  in  one  of  which  two  students 
at  Gottingen  exchange  bodies,  with  the  result  that  the  hero  barely 
escapes  being  buried  alive,  and  identities  become  as  confused  as  in 
Hoffmann's  "Devil's  Elixir"  or  Gautier's  "Avatar."  "The  Heads- 
man" uses  the  old  superstition  that  an  executioner's  axe  clinks  when 
its  destined  victim  goes  by,  a  belief  which  plays  an  important  part 
in  "Fair  Annerl,"  the  masterpiece  of  the  German  Romanticist  Bren- 
tano.  In  some  ways  these  "Tales"  are  distinctly  Scotch,  in  others 
they  represent  the  converging  of  various  international  currents. 

From  1825  on  John  Wilson  enriched  the  pages  of  Maga  with  his 
"Noctes."  They  have  all  the  vitality  which  is  life,  and  all  the  form- 
lessness which  is  not  art.  One  must  wander  in  them  as  he  would  in 
a  meadow,  browsing  where  he  feels  inclined.  In  these  symposia 

[  157  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

Christopher  North  (Wilson  himself),  the  Ettrick  Shepherd,  and 
other  characters  real  or  imaginary,  wake  at  random,  as  the  whim 
leads  them,  the  strings  of  humor  or  pathos,  poetry  or  abuse.  "The 
South  Briton,"  says  Professor  Elton,  "until  he  has  read  a  few  of 
the  'Noctes  Ambrosianae,'  has  no  notion  of  what  old  Scottish  con- 
vivial eloquence  can  be,  when  in  full  spate.''  Wilson's  half-extempo- 
raneous dialogues  recall  the  words  of  his  fellow  countryman  Steven- 
son: "Natural  talk,  like  ploughing,  should  turn  up  a  large  surface 
of  life,  rather  than  dig  mines  into  geological  strata.  Masses  of  expe- 
rience, anecdote,  incident,  cross-lights,  quotation,  historical  in- 
stances, the  whole  flotsam  and  jetsam  of  two  minds  forced  in  and 
in  upon  the  matter  in  hand  from  every  point  of  the  compass,  and 
from  every  degree  of  mental  elevation  and  abasement — these  are 
the  material  with  which  talk  is  fortified." 

Socially,  the  Blackwood's  group  was  the  heart  of  the  prose  eddy 
in  Scotland.  They  were  connected  on  one  side  with  the  renowned 
Sir  Walter,  on  the  other  with  the  minor  novelists,  nearly  all  of  whom 
were  among  their  contributors.  The  original  leaders  were  William 
Blackwood  himself,  James  Hogg,  Lockhart,  and  John  Wilson  (the 
friend  of  Wordsworth),  who  had  now  been  driven  by  financial 
reverses  to  Edinburgh  and  industry.  William  Blackwood's  friendly 
attitude  toward  the  author  of  "Waverley"  was  not  always  recipro- 
cated by  the  great  novelist;  but  Hogg  and  Wilson  were  the  friends 
of  Scott,  and  his  faithful  retainer  Laidlaw  was  an  occasional  con- 
tributor, as  was  his  grateful  though  wayward  protSgS  R.  P.  Gillies. 
The  chief  bond,  however,  between  Scott  and  Blackwood's  was  in  the 
person  of  Lockhart,  who  met  the  arch  romancer  one  year  after  the 
founding  of  the  magazine,  and  became  his  son-in-law  in  1820. 

It  is  a  vivid  picture  of  group  activity  that  Mrs.  Oliphant  gives  in 
describing  the  editorial  headquarters  of  Maga:  "One  can  imagine 
the  bustle  and  the  commotion  in  the  rooms  in  Princes  Street,  the 
endless  consultations,  the  wild  suggestions:  Lockhart,  pensive  and 
serious,  almost  melancholy,  in  the  fiery  fever  of  satire  and  ridicule 
that  possessed  him,  launching  his  javelin  with  a  certain  pleasure 
in  the  mischief  as  well  as  the  most  perfect  self-abandonment  to  the 
impulse  of  the  moment;  Wilson,  with  Homeric  roars  of  laughter, 

[  158  ] 


THE  SCOTCH  ERA  OF  PROSE 

and  a  recklessness  still  less  under  control,  not  caring  whom  he 
attacked  nor  with  what  bitterness,  apparently  unconscious  of  the 
sting  till  it  was  inflicted,  when  he  collapsed  into  ineffectual  peni- 
tence; Hogg  bustling  in,  all  flushed  and  heated  with  a  new  idea,  in 
which  the  rustic  daffing  of  the  countryside  gave  a  rougher  force  to 
the  keen  shafts  of  the  gentlemen.  That  it  must  be  a  strong  number, 
something  to  startle  the  world,  a  sort  of  fiery  meteor  to  blaze  across 
the  Edinburgh  sky  and  call  every  man's  attention,  was  the  first 
necessity.'' 

In  1 82 1  William  Maginn,  an  Irishman  who  had  already  sent  some 
contributions  from  Cork,  came  to  Edinburgh  and  joined  the  band. 
"Bright  broken  Maginn!"  His  wit  and  thirst  were  great,  his  wisdom 
and  will  power  small;  and  if  he  added  to  the  brilliancy  of  Black- 
wood's he  hardly  reflected  dignity  upon  it.  Thackeray  has  given  a 
picture  of  all  that  he  was  and  failed  to  be  in  the  character  of  Captain 
Shandon.  A  few  years  later  a  more  tragic  wreck,  De  Quincey,  became 
a  contributor  to  Maga  and  wandered  to  Edinburgh  to  end  his  days 
there,  having  been  first  introduced  to  the  magazine  by  Wilson,  his 
old  friend  of  the  Lakes.  On  many  more  occasional  contributors  there 
is  no  need  of  dwelling. 

It  is  not  easy  to  draw  a  sharp  distinction  between  the  literary 
output  of  Blackwood's  and  that  of  the  minor  novelists.  Most  of 
them  were  contributors  to  Maga,  and  several  novels  which  were 
eventually  printed  separately  first  appeared  in  its  pages.  In  general 
they  represent  either  the  Gothic  mystery  or  the  broad  realism  of 
Scott's  early  novels,  only  the  two  tendencies  run  oftener  in  separate 
currents,  not  usually  alternating,  as  with  Scott,  through  the  same 
book. 

James  Hogg,  who  turned  prose  writer  in  his  later  years,  fathered 
modern  stories  of  ghosts,  murder,  and  robbery,  ancient  legends  of 
the  supernatural,  such  as  "The  Heart  of  Eildon,"  or  historical  novels, 
such  as  "The  Brownie  of  Bodsbeck:  A  Tale  of  the  Covenanters," 
in  which  he  unfortunately  competed  with  "Old  Mortality."  His 
"Confessions  of  a  Justified  Sinner"  is  a  story  of  religious  frenzy, 
insanity,  and  crime,  in  which  the  tale  of  terror  is  made  semi- 
realistic  without  losing  its  nerve-racking  thrill.  A  similar  union  of 

[  IS9  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

terror  and  realism,  with  the  latter  more  emphasized,  appears  in 
Lockhart's  "History  of  Matthew  Wald,"  which  was  published  in 
the  same  year  (1824).  Matthew's  wife  is  not  a  religious  maniac, 
but  she  is  a  religious  fanatic;  Matthew  himself  goes  mad.  It  is  easy 
to  see  how  Scott  pronounced  the  story  "full  of  power,  but  disagree- 
able." Two  years  earlier  John  Wilson  published  his  "Lights  and 
Shadows  of  Scottish  Life."  Local  realism  may  have  been  his  aim, 
for  he  declared  the  book  "intensely  Scottish";  but  the  verdict  of 
posterity  will  probably  agree  with  that  of  Mrs.  Oliphant  that  his 
sketches  "represent  the  romantic  sentimentalism  of  the  day  rather 
than  Scotland  or  country  life  or  anything  else  in  earth  or  heaven." 

Three  novelists  of  Scotch  blood  who  contributed  to  Blackwood's 
but  had  little  personal  contact  with  its  ruling  spirits  were  John  Gait, 
D.  M.  Moir,  and  C.  R.  Gleig.  Gait  lived  mainly  at  London,  though 
on  a  northern  trip  in  1823  he  made  an  admirer  of  Moir,  and  a  lit- 
erary disciple  as  well.  Moir,  the  A  of  Blackwood's,  furnished  nearly 
four  hundred  contributions  to  that  magazine,  and  was  the  friend 
of  John  Wilson,  but  led  the  life  of  a  busy  local  physician  at  Mussel- 
burgh and  refused  every  invitation  to  settle  in  the  Scotch  capital. 
Gleig  passed  nearly  all  his  life  in  England  and  was  connected  with 
Maga  only  at  long  range. 

Gait's  "Annals  of  the  Parish"  is  the  work  of  a  prose  Crabbe, 
his  "Entail"  that  of  a  local  and  lesser  Zola,  as  is  also  his  "Ayrshire 
Legatees,"  which  was  first  published  in  Blackwood's  in  1820. 
Humor,  harshness,  and  unquestionable  veracity  are  in  them;  and 
the  author,  says  Professor  Cross,  "laid  bare  the  heart  of  Scotland 
as  only  Burns  had  done."  Other  novels  of  this  vigorous  but  narrow 
genius  attempt  the  historical  vein  of  Scott,  though  with  such  ill 
success  that  they  are  no  longer  remembered  in  connection  with  the 
writer's  name.  Moir's  chief  work,  "The  Life  of  Mansie  Wauch, 
Tailor  in  Dalkeith,"  is  in  a  vein  similar  to  that  of  Gait,  whose  friend- 
ship had  inspired  it.  It  appeared  first  in  Blackwood's  and  was  re- 
printed in  1828.  Gleig's  "Subaltern,"  published  in  the  magazine  in 
1826,  is  fictionized  autobiography,  describing  the  adventures  of  a 
soldier  in  the  Peninsular  War.  Another  story  of  military  adventure 
is  "The  Youth  and  Manhood  of  Cyril  Thornton,"  by  Captain 

[  160  ] 


THE  SCOTCH  ERA  OF  PROSE 

Thomas  Hamilton,  who  lived  in  Edinburgh,  was  a  contributor  to 
Blackwood's  and  also  a  friend  of  Lockhart  and  Scott.  For  a  time  he 
was  practically  one  of  the  staff  of  Maga,  and  we  find  Lockhart 
urging  Blackwood  to  "poke  up  Tom  Hamilton." 

Not  among  the  writers  for  Blackwood's  yet  connected  with  the 
eddy  around  it  was  Susan  Ferrier.  She  was  the  friend  and  "sister 
shadow"  of  Scott;  her  nephew  married  the  daughter  of  John  Wilson; 
she  lived  in  Edinburgh;  and  William  Blackwood  acted  as  publisher 
for  her  first  two  novels.  Her  three  works,  "Marriage,"  "The  Inherit- 
ance," and  "Destiny,"  are  in  a  vein  that  Jane  Austen  might  have 
used  if  she  had  been  born  a  Scotchwoman.  Languishing  English 
beauties,  red-haired  girls  and  grim-faced  aunts  of  Scotland,  epicu- 
rean, hard-fisted  clergymen  and  arrogant  Highland  chiefs,  are  all 
handled  with  kindness  or  with  satire,  as  the  case  may  be. 

Scotch  poetry,  as  pointed  out  earlier,  was  moribund  after  1814, 
but  was  not  wholly  dead.  In  1824  Lockhart  published  his  "Ancient 
Spanish  Ballads,"  several  of  which  had  already  appeared  in  Maga. 
The  Spanish  vein  had  been  mined  by  Southey  and  touched  on  by 
Frere.  In  the  year  of  Lockhart's  book  appeared  Sir  John  Bowring's 
"Ancient  Poetry  and  Romance  of  Spain."  At  about  the  same  time 
De  Quincey  wrote  as  follows  in  The  London  Magazine:  "In  1808-9 
you  must  well  remember  what  a  strong  impulse  the  opening  of 
the  Peninsular  War  communicated  to  our  current  literature.  The 
presses  of  London  and  the  provinces  teemed  with  editions  of  Spanish 
books,  dictionaries,  and  grammars;  and  the  motions  of  the  British 
armies  were  accompanied  by  a  corresponding  activity  among  British 
compositors.  From  the  just  interest  which  is  now  renewed  in  Spanish 
affairs,  I  suppose  something  of  the  same  scene  will  recur."  Lock- 
hart's  free  but  spirited  paraphrases  came  on  the  crest  of  the  wave, 
and  started  a  popular  current  that  was  many  years  in  subsiding. 
"Romantic  Spain"  now  competed  with  "romantic  Italy"  among  the 
facile  and  feeble  slaves  of  the  pen.  Lockhart's  collection  includes 
"historical"  ballads  of  King  Roderick  and  the  Cid,  "romantic" 
ballads,  among  them  "Count  Arnaldos,"  paraphrased  later  by  Long- 
fellow as  "The  Secret  of  the  Sea,"  and  "Moorish"  ballads. 

At  the  gates  of  old  Granada,  when  all  its  bolts  are  barred. 

[  161  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

There  are  long  rattling  metres  and  vivid  flashes  of  color.  "The 
March  of  Bernardo  del  Carpio"  has  the  masculine  energy  which 
Mrs.  Hemans  failed  to  excite  about  the  same  hero: 

The  peasant  hears  upon  his  field  the  trumpet  of  the  knight, — 
He  quits  his  team  for  spear  and  shield  and  garniture  of  might; 
The  shepherd  hears  it  'mid  the  mist, — he  flingeth  down  his  crook, 
And  rushes  from  the  mountain  like  a  tempest-troubled  brook. 

It  is  a  curious  contrast  with  all  this  and  a  curious  comment  on 
popular  taste  that  the  great  best  seller  of  the  late  Caledonian  muse 
was  Pollok's  "Course  of  Time,"  an  impossible  didactic  poem  in 
blank  verse,  tracing  the  history  of  man  down  from  Adam  to  a  date 
not  found  by  the  majority  of  readers.  This  belated  survival  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  which  was  published  by  Blackwood  in  1827, 
went  through  edition  after  edition,  and  finally  became  a  prize  book 
for  diligent  scholars  in  Sunday  or  day  schools, 

That  last  infirmity  of  noble  rhymes. 

Just  as  the  third  decade  of  the  century  merged  into  the  fourth,  two 
young  Scotch  poets,  Aytoun  and  Motherwell,  began  to  revive  the 
martial,  antique  poetry  of  "The  Lay"  and  "The  Queen's  Wake"; 
but  they  were  of  a  younger  generation  and  belong  to  a  later  period. 
The  years  that  we  have  been  discussing  had  been  the  Scotch 
reign  of  prose;  and  the  one  genuine  triumph  in  verse  had  been 
a  translation. 


[  162  ] 


CHAPTER  VIII 

The  Eddy  Around  Leigh  Hunt 

Literary  historians  have  their  usual  differences  of  opinion  as  to 
when  the  "romantic"  or  early  nineteenth-century  period  of  poetry 
began.  1760,  1798,  and  1805  have  all  been  justly  pointed  out  as 
significant  dates.  Naturally  the  changes  in  one  phase  of  poetry  over- 
lapped those  in  another,  each  period  named  seeing  something  altered, 
none  beholding  a  complete  revolution.  As  a  boundary  between  the 
old  and  new  the  years  1814-1816  equaled  in  importance  any  that  pre- 
ceded. Those  three  years  witnessed  the  downfall  of  Napoleon,  the 
opening  up  of  Europe,  the  focusing  of  new  and  powerful  forces  on  the 
creative  imagination  of  England.  Brilliant  foreigners  came  swarming 
into  London;  brilliant  Englishmen  poured  in  a  sudden  exodus 
through  the  beautiful  landscapes  and  famous  art  galleries  of  the 
continent.  Those  years  divide  the  early  "romantic  poets,"  who  were 
little  imitated  in  the  late  nineteenth  century,  from  the  younger 
generation,  whose  trail  spreads  over  almost  all  English  poetry  after 
1850.  The  earlier  Byron  was  rejected  by  the  late  nineteenth  cen- 
tury; Scott,  Coleridge,  and  Wordsworth,  even  when  much  admired, 
were  but  little  imitated;  Keats  and  Shelley  were  held  up  as  universal 
models. 

The  new  eddy  that  began  post-Napoleonic  verse  grew  marked 
about  1815  or  181 6,  and  gradually  disintegrated  or  realigned  itself 
before  Leigh  Hunt's  departure  to  Italy  in  1822.  Its  archenemy 
Blackwood's  dubbed  it  the  "Cockney"  school  of  poetry;  Byron,  witJi 
more  justice,  called  it  "the  Suburban  School."  Most  of  the  authors 
connected  with  it  were  suburbanites,  with  the  virtues  and  faults 
which  their  manner  of  life  tended  to  develop.  They  were  Londoners 

[  163  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

either  by  birth  or  adoption;  they  moved  in  respectable  society  but 
not  in  the  inner  circle  of  wealth  and  rank;  they  lived  much  of  their 
time  in  Hampstead  or  other  outlying  regions  of  the  great  metropolis. 
Blood  and  training  had  placed  to  their  credit  as  much  nobility  of 
character  as  to  the  London  society  poets,  and  greater  imaginative 
power;  but  had  prepared  a  woeful  debit  account  of  foibles  and 
idiosyncrasies  that  laid  them  open  to  ridicule  or  misunderstanding. 
Most  of  them  were  not  university  men  or  men  of  the  world;  they 
had  traveled  little,  they  had  little  wealth. 

As  is  often  the  case,  the  central  figure  in  this  eddy  was  neither 
its  greatest  author  nor  its  most  forcible  character.  Leigh  Hunt  was 
not  only  inferior  to  Keats  and  Shelley  as  a  poet;  he  was  also,  in  spite 
of  his  many  virtues,  a  less  dignified  and  commanding  figure  as  a 
man.  He  had  none  of  that  leonine  dignity  and  military  love  of  system 
which  made  Victor  Hugo,  the  son  of  a  French  general,  marshal  his 
literary  camp  as  his  father  had  a  battalion.  Yet  Hunt  possessed  two 
qualities  which  rendered  him  for  years  the  center,  and  to  some 
extent  the  leader,  of  a  literary  movement.  One  was  his  marvelously 

•A:orrect  judgment  as  to  the  value  of  contemporary  literature.  With 
all  his  errors  of  judgment  in  other  fields  we  must  grant  him  this. 
No  critic  from  1750  to  1830  has  had  fewer  of  his  decisions  reversed 
by  posterity.  The  other  and  still  more  important  trait  was  his  mag- 

^netic  power  of  drawing  literary  men  around  him  as  friends.  Carlyle, 
who  was  not  given  to  gushing,  declared  him  "a  man  who  can  be 
other  than  loved  only  by  those  who  have  not  seen  him,  or  seen  him 
from  a  distance  through  a  false  medium."  Lamb  found  him  "the 
most  cordial-minded  man  I  ever  knew,  and  matchless  as  a  fireside 
companion."  Cowden  Clarke,  his  lifelong  friend,  speaks  of  "that 
bewitching  spell  of  manner  which  characterized  Leigh  Hunt  beyond 
any  man  I  have  ever  known." 

It  is  not  easy  to  draw  the  exact  limits  of  the  literary  vortex  that 
formed  around  him,  for  in  the  complex  life  of  a  great  city  many 
cross  currents  tend  to  mingle  streams  that  in  the  main  run  separate. 
Some  were  more  close  to  him  as  friends  than  as  writers;  others  more 
close  as  writers  than  as  men.  Most  of  them  at  that  time  were  com- 
paratively obscure;  and  details  about  their  lives  are  not  always 

[  164  ] 


THE  EDDY  AROUND  LEIGH  HUNT 

plentiful.  Some  formed  part  of  the  eddy  for  many  years;  others, 
such  as  Shelley,  for  only  a  short  interval.  The  group  unquestionably 
included  the  great  lyrists  Shelley  and  Keats,  and  the  lesser  but 
genuine  poets  J.  H.  Reynolds,  Hunt  himself,  James  and  Horace 
Smith,  and  Charles  Wells.  Bryan  Waller  Procter  was  more  loosely 
connected  with  it,  as  was  Lamb^s  friend  Charles  Lloyd.  Cornelius 
Webb,  though  a  very  minor  poet,  was  one  of  the  circle.  It  embraced 
also  the  prose  writers,  Lamb  and  Hazlitt,  though  the  latter's  un- 
sociability prevented  him  from  belonging  lastingly  to  any  group, 
and  he  showed  enduring  affection  only  for  Lamb.  Two  painters  of 
considerable  rank,  Haydon  and  Severn,  complete  the  list  of  those 
who  did  any  remarkable  creative  work.  Besides  these  there  were 
other  members  of  the  social  group:  Charles  Cowden  Clarke,  later 
on  the  eminent  Shakespeare  scholar,  the  Novellos,  a  family  of  half- 
Italian  musicians,  the  Oilier  brothers, — minor  poets  and  publishers 
for  the  crowd,  as  Cottle  had  been  for  the  Bristol  poets, — Charles 
Armitage  Brown,  Dilke,  and  others. 

In  December,  1812,  Leigh  Hunt,  then  twenty-eight  years  old  and 
editor  of  The  Examiner,  was  condemned  to  a  fine  and  two  years' 
imprisonment  for  the  unwisely  frank  utterances  of  his  paper  about 
the  Prince  Regent.  In  his  double  character  as  editor  of  a  well-known  1 
periodical  and  martyr  for  liberty,  he  naturally  drew  on  himself  the 
eyes  of  many  enthusiastic  young  poets,  and  thus  laid  the  foundation 
for  several  of  his  friendships.  He  was  released  from  prison  in 
February,  181 5,  and  by  that  time  was  already  beginning  to  gather 
around  him  a  literary  following. 

Before  his  imprisonment  he  had  known  Campbell;  during  his 
confinement  Byron  and  Moore  had  visited  their  fellow  apostle  of 
freedom  and  treated  him  with  great  kindness  and  cordiality;  but 
none  of  these  men  became  in  any  sense  his  poetical  disciples  or 
mingled  with  the  little  coterie  of  which  he  soon  became  the  center. 
Both  in  verse  and  society  they  knelt  to  other  gods.  Keats  and  several 
of  the  lesser  poets,  who  became  Hunt's  daily  companions,  they 
neither  met  nor  wished  to  meet. 

Of  the  literary  eddy  to  be.  Hunt's  first  recruits  were  Haydon, 
Hazlitt,  and  Lamb.  Haydon,  later  a  historical  painter  of  considerable 

[  165  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

merit  but  then  a  poor,  struggling  young  artist,  knew  Hunt  by  1809, 
and  in  181 1  "used  to  sketch  and  explain  what  I  thought  to  Leigh 
Hunt,  then  in  the  height  of  his  Examiner  reputation."  Next  year 
when  Haydon  was  overcome  by  poverty  and  what  he  considered 
injustice,  "Leigh  Hunt  behaved  nobly.  He  offered  me  always  a  plate 
at  his  table  till  Solomon  was  done."  Lamb  had  contributed  to  Hunt's 
brief-lived  Reflector  (1810-12);  and  he  and  Hazlitt  both  visited 
Hunt  in  prison.  Lamb  and  his  sister  coming  "in  all  weathers,  hail  or 
sunshine,  in  daylight  and  in  darkness,  even  in  the  dreadful  frost 
and  snow  of  the  beginning  of  1814."  Hazlitt  and  Lamb  had  been 
friends  for  years.  Hazlitt  was  introduced  to  Haydon  in  181 2  at  the 
painter  Northcote's,  and  in  a  few  months  was  having  "daily  con- 
tests" with  him.  Hunt  had  met  Charles  Oilier  in  1810  and  James 
and  Horace  Smith,  authors  of  the  famous  "Rejected  Addresses," 
even  earlier;  but  relations  were  apparently  not  very  close  until  181 6, 
in  which  year  Haydon  first  met  Horace  Smith. 
-  While  Hunt  was  in  prison  young  Charles  Cowden  Clarke  "was 
good  enough  to  be  his  own  introducer,  paving  his  way,  like  a  proper 
visitor  of  prisons,  with  baskets  of  fruit,"  although,  according  to 
/Clarke's  statement,  they  had  met  earlier  at  a  party.  It  was  in  his 
character  as  liberal  editor  that  Hunt  won  this  new  neophyte,  for 
Clarke  tells  us:  "My  father  had  taken  in  the  Examiner  newspaper 
from  its  commencement,  he  and  I  week  after  week  revelling  in  the 
liberty-loving,  liberty-advocating,  liberty-eloquent  articles  of  the 
young  editor;  and  now  that  I  made  his  personal  acquaintance  I  was 
indeed  a  proud  and  happy  fellow."  This  eager  disciple  soon  after 
i^rew  in  his  wake  into  the  Hunt  circle  John  Keats,  who  had  studied 
with  him  at  his  father's  school  and  been  his  friend  for  years.  Some- 
where around  the  beginning  of  181 6  Clarke  showed  some  of  Keats's 
j^oetry  to  Hunt  and  Horace  Smith,  and  as  a  result  of  their  enthu- 
siasm soon  after  introduced  them  to  the  poet  himself. 
.  Before  the  end  of  181 6  two  other  men,  Joseph  Severn  and  John 
^Tlamilton  Reynolds,  had  become  friends  of  Keats.  Severn  at  this 
time  was  a  lonely  engraver's  apprentice  and  casual  student  of  art. 
Later  he  achieved  moderate  success  as  a  painter;  but  his  chief  claim 
to  immortality  is  his  devoted  love  for  the  doomed  author  of  "Hype- 

[  166  ] 


THE  EDDY  AROUND  LEIGH  HUNT 

rion,"  over  whose  tragic  death  he  watched  so  unselfishly,  "his 
perfect  friend/'  as  Cowden  Clarke  enthusiastically  declared.  During 
visits  at  Hampstead  in  or  after  1816  Severn  met  Hunt,  Hay— - 
don,  Reynolds,  and  Charles  Brown,  though  the  latter  only  of 
them  appears  to  have  become  his  intimate  friend.  In  181 7,  he  tells 
us,  Hunt  introduced  him  to  Shelley.  Reynolds,  one  year  younger  than 
Keats  and  equally  precocious  as  a  poet,  but  less  capable  of  con- 
tinuous improvement,  was,  for  a  time  at  least,  almost  as  close  to 
his  great  contemporary  as  Severn. 

Shelley  and  Hunt  had  met  before  the  latter 's  imprisonment  but 
had  seen  little  of  each  other.  In  181 6,  however,  when  the  lonely 
lyrist  came  back  from  Switzerland,  he  settled  at  Great  Marlow,  in 
Buckinghamshire  near  London,  where  for  nearly  two  years,  until 
his  departure  for  Italy  in  the  spring  of  181 8,  he  was  on  terms  of  V 
close  intimacy  with  Hunt  and  saw  a  good  deal  of  the  latter's  literary    \ 
friends.  It  was  under  Hunt's  roof  that  he  met  with  Keats  and  Cow-^^ 
den  Clarke;  and  through  him  his  devoted  friend  Peacock  was  tempo-     I 
rarily  drawn  by  attraction  into  the  outer  edge  of  the  enthusiastic     I 
circle. 

Before  181 7  Keats  at  least  was  acquainted  with  Charles  Wells,  X> 
from  whom  he  received  some  roses  and  to  whom  in  acknowledgment 
he  wrote  a  sonnet.  In  181 8  Lloyd  settled  in  London  and  as  a  friend 
of  Lamb  came  slightly,  but  only  slightly,  in  touch  with  Lamb's 
companions.  A  more  important  addition  was  Bryan  Waller  Procter,—' 
better  known  in  that  day  by  his  nom  de  plume  of  "Barry  Cornwall," 
destined  to  be  the  most  popular,  though  not  the  greatest,  poet  con- 
nected with  the  eddy.  He  first  met  Leigh  Hunt  in  181 7,  and  by  him 
"I  was  introduced  to  Keats,  Peacock,  Hazlitt,  Coulson,  Novello  (the 
composer  of  music),  and  to  Charles  Lamb.  Hazlitt  took  me  to 
Haydon  and  Charles  Lloyd;  and  at  Charles  Lamb's  evening  parties 
I  found  Talfourd,  Manning,  and  the  renowned  Samuel  Taylor  Cole- 
ridge." Procter  was  the  friend  of  Hunt  and  Haydon,  but  saw  Keats 
"only  two  or  three  times  before  his  departure  for  Italy."  In  fact, 
this  amiable  and  popular  young  writer  belonged  only  incidentally 
to  the  group,  and  after  1820,  when  he  had  become  famous,  associated 

[  167  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

fully  as  much  with  the  Holland  House  poets,  Rogers,  Campbell,  and 
Moore,  as  with  them.* 

"^  Shelley  went  to  Italy  in  1818,  Keats  and  Severn  in  1821,  Hunt 
in  1822.  After  that,  though  a  social  group  remained,  its  literary 
glory  was  past.  Lamb,  Procter,  and  Reynolds  were  drawn  into  a 
kindred  and  closely  related  eddy,  that  of  the  London  Magazine. 
Eventually,  Procter  abandoned  poetry  for  married  happiness  and 
Reynolds  left  it  for  the  law.  With  the  exception  of  "Barry  Corn- 
wall," not  one  of  them  had  gained,  in  art,  poetry,  or  prose,  either 
wealth  or  general  recognition.  They  were  destined  to  be  the  chief 
molding  force  in  English  poetry  for  nearly  a  century;  but  in  1820 
John  Bull  would  have  heard  of  their  future  with  a  contemptuous 
stare. 

The  life  that  they  led  was  utterly  different  from  that  of  the  Scotch 
or  Lake  or  Holland  House  poets.  Instead  of  the  wild  grandeur  of 
Skiddaw  and  lonely  majesty  of  Winander  they  saw,  in  the  words 
of  Hazlitt,  "Hampstead  and  Highgate,  with  their  hanging  gardens 
and  lofty  terraces,  and  Primrose  Hill  nestling  beneath  them,  in 
green,  pastoral  luxury,  the  delight  of  the  Cockneys,  the  aversion  of 
Sir  Walter  and  his  merry  men."  Everything  around  them  was  un- 
eventful, ungigantic,  pretty,  and  commonplace.  There  is  something 
pathetic  in  hearing  Hunt  cry  at  the  age  of  thirty-eight:  "The  ALPS! 
It  was  the  first  time  I  had  seen  mountains."  And  he  adds  in  uncon- 
scious comment  on  the  surroundings  that  had  encouraged  his  own 
too  feminine  verse:  "I  seemed  to  meet  for  the  first  time  a  grand 
poetical  thought  in  a  material  shape."  Those  peaks  were  so  unlike 
his  own  picture  of  Hampstead: 

woods  that  let  mansions  through, 
And  cottaged  vales  with  pillowy  fields  beyond, 
And  clump  of  darkening  pines,  and  prospects  blue. 

Scott  among  his  ruined  peels  and  frowning  Trossachs  is  equally  un- 
like Cowden  Clarke's  description  of  himself  at  Highgate,  "in  that 

♦For  some  further  details  regarding  this  group,  see  chapter  III  of  Sidney  Colvin's 
"John  Keats"  (1917)  and  chapter  XVI  of  Roger  Ingpen's  "Shelley  in  England"  (1917), 
both  of  which  books  were  published  after  this  chapter  was  written. 

[  168  ] 


THE  EDDY  AROUND  LEIGH  HUNT 

pretty  suburban  spot,  then  green  with  tall  trees  and  shrub-grown 
gardens  and  near  adjoining  meadows.  Pleasant  were  the  walks  taken 
arm-in-arm  with  such  a  host  and  entertainer  as  Leigh  Hunt.  Some- 
times .  .  .  past  a  handsome  white  detached  house  in  a  shrubbery 
with  a  long  low  gallery  built  out";  or  "on  through  the  pretty  bowery 
lane — then  popularly  known  as  Millfield  Lane,  but  called  in  his 
circle  Poets'  Lane,  frequented  as  it  was  by  himself,  Shelley,  Keats, 
and  Coleridge." 

Their  social  life  was  different  from  that  of  the  other  groups.  They 
alone  had  the  informal,  amusing,  but  often  inspiring  atmosphere 
of  literary  bohemia.  Their  social  life  mingled  together  the  different 
arts  as  was  not  done  elsewhere  until  the  days  of  the  pre-Raphaelite 
Brotherhood.  Poets  and  critics  argued  in  Hay  don's  studio  while  he 
sketched;  in  Italy  Severn  painted  pictures  from  the  verse  of  Keats; 
in  England  the  two  had  strolled  together  through  the  paintings  of 
the  National  Gallery  and  the  sculpture  galleries  of  the  British 
Museum.  All  alike  listened  to  the  music  of  the  Novellos;  and 
Haydon,  the  arch-enthusiast  over  the  Elgin  Marbles,  made  his  com- 
rades bow  in  devotion  before  those  noble  examples  of  Greek  stat- 
uary. Cowden  Clarke  gives  a  graphic  picture  of  their  life.  "The 
glorious  feasts  of  sacred  music  at  the  Portuguese  Chapel  in  South 
Street,  Grosvenor  Square,  where  Vincent  Novello  was  organist,  and 
introduced  the  masses  of  Mozart  and  Haydn  for  the  first  time  in 
England,  and  where  the  noble  old  Gregorian  hymn  tunes  and  re- 
sponses were  chanted  to  perfection  by  a  small  but  select  choir  drilled 
and  cultivated  by  him;  tie  exquisite  evenings  of  Mozartian  operatic 
and  chamber  music  at  Vincent  Novello's  own  house,  where  Leigh 
Hunt,  Shelley,  Keats,  and  the  Lambs  were  invited  guests;  the  bril- 
liant supper  parties  at  the  alternate  dwellings  of  the  Novellos,  the 
Hunts,  and  tlae  Lambs,  who  had  mutually  agreed  that  bread  and 
cheese,  with  celery,  and  Elia's  immortalized  ^Lutheran  beer,'  were 
to  be  the  sole  cates  provided;  the  meetings  at  the  theater,  when 
Munden,  Dowton,  Liston,  Bannister,  Elliston,  and  Fanny  Kelly 
were  on  the  stage;  and  the  picnic  repasts  enjoyed  together  by 
appointment  in  the  fields  that  then  lay  spread  in  green  breadth  and 
luxuriance  between  the  west-end  of  Oxford  Street  and  the  western 

[  169  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

slope  of  Hampstead  Hill — are  things  never  to  be  forgotten."  This 
was  between  1816  and  181 7.  In  July,  1819,  Hunt  wrote  to  Mary 
Shelley:  "I  see  a  good  deal  of  Lamb,  Hazlitt,  Coulson,  the  Novellos, 
etc.,  but  as  much  at  their  own  house  as  at  mine,  or  rather  more  just 
now.  We  give  no  dinners  as  we  used.  Our  two  other  out-of-door 
amusements  are  the  theatre  (an  involuntary  one),  and  taking  our 
books  and  sandwiches,  and  spending  a  day  in  the  fields, — which 
we  do  often." 

No  one  would  venture  to  say  how  far  the  literature  of  the  group 
was  the  product  of  their  environment,  how  far  of  common  feelings 
existing  beforehand  in  all  its  members,  how  far  of  Hunt's  influence. 
All  three  forces  had  their  part.  Lamb's  prose  has  more  kinship  to 
the  genial  informality  of  Hunt's  essays  than  is  generally  recognized; 
and  the  two  men  had  been  associating  and  publishing  through  the 
same  channels  for  nearly  a  decade  before  Lamb  reached  his  high- 
water  mark  as  Elia.  Definite  and  numerous  likenesses  can  be  traced 
between  the  poetry  of  Hunt  and  much  of  the  verse  by  Reynolds, 
Webb,  Keats,  and  Procter,  with  more  questionable  traces  in  a  few 
poems  of  Shelley.  It  must  be  remembered,  however,  that  in  a  great 
metropolis  with  wide  range  of  choice  in  acquaintance,  men  of  similar 
tastes  tend  to  gravitate  toward  each  other;  and  what  seems  to  be 
imitation  is  often  merely  the  result  of  like  minds  affiliating  together. 
All  the  Holland  House  poets  imitated  Pope,  but  most  of  them  had 
done  so  before  they  became  Holland  House  poets.  If  the  Hunt 
circle  wrote  as  they  did  partly  because  they  saw  much  of  each  other 
and  lived  much  in  the  suburbs,  it  is  probably  also  true  that  they 
sought  each  other's  company  and  turned  much  to  the  suburbs 
because  of  their  natural  taste. 

Many  members  of  the  eddy  were  acquaintances  rather  than 
l^riends,  held  together  by  their  common  love  of  Keats  or  Hunt,  and 
at  times  there  were  bitter  ^'rifts  within  the  lute";  yet  unquestion- 
ably there  was  a  considerable  amount  of  communal  literary  activity. 
Hunt  and  Keats  on  a  challenge  wrote  rival  sonnets  "On  the  Grass- 
hopper and  the  Cricket."  Keats  and  Brown  collaborated  in  the 
drama  of  "Otho  the  Great."  Hunt  and  Hazlitt  wrote  ''The  Round 
Table"  together,  the  essays  appearing  in  Hunt's  Examiner.  Shelley's 

[  170  ] 


THE  EDDY  AROUND  LEIGH  HUNT 

"To  the  Nile"  was  written  in  competition  with  Keats  and  Hunt, 
and  his  ^'Revolt  of  Islam"  in  generous  rivalry  with  Keats's  "Endym- 
ion."  Keats's  ''Sleep  and  Poetry"  was  composed  in  Hunt's  library, 
and  the  last  sixty  or  seventy  lines  are  an  inventory  of  the  art  garni- 
ture of  the  room.  Procter's  "Sicilian  Story"  and  Keats's  "Isabella" 
retell  the  same  tale  from  Boccaccio;  and  Reynolds's  "Garden  of 
Florence"  and  "Ladye  of  Provence"  are  tales  from  the  same  source, 
tales  that  Keats  and  Reynolds  planned  together.  Hunt's  "Literary 
Pocket-book"  (1819-22)  was  a  group  publication,  containing  short 
poems  and  prose  pieces  by  Cowden  Clarke,  Shelley,  Keats,  Procter, 
Charles  Oilier,  Hunt  himself,  Cornelius  Webb,  Lloyd,  and  others. 
We  have  fragmentary  records  of  critical  discussions  between  Hay- 
don  and  Hazlitt,  Hunt  and  Keats,  Hunt  and  Shelley,  Keats  and 
Severn.  Each  writer  kept  his  own  individuality,  yet  in  many  details 
would  not  have  written  as  he  did  had  he  not  been  part  of  the  literary 
eddy  around  Leigh  Hunt. 

One  of  the  most  marked  characteristics  of  the  "school"  was  its 
delight  in  luxurious  surrender  to  the  joys  of  the  senses.  "Oh  for  a 
life  of  sensations  rather  than  of  thoughts,"  cried  Keats,  and  in  181 8: 
"I  have  been  hovering  for  some  time  between  an  exquisite  sense  of 
the  luxurious,  and  a  love  for  philosophy."  The  next  year  Hunt  wrote 
to  Shelley:  "The  other  day  I  had  a  delicious  sleep  in  a  haycock'. 
These  green  fields  and  blue  skies  throw  me  into  a  kind  of  placid 
intoxication.  .  .  .  There  is  a  sort  of  kind  and  beautiful  sensuality  in 
it  which  softens  the  cuts  and  oppressiveness  of  intellectual  percep- 
tion." Hunt's  "Story  of  Rimini,"  Keats's  earlier  poems,  and  some  of 
Reynolds  and  Procter  are  full  of  this  mood.  It  is  in  itself  an  exceed- 
ingly poetical  one,  but  when  reduced  to  composition  fails  to  develop 
either  mental  content  or  moral  force,  and  becomes  indeed  the  flesh 
and  blood  of  poetry,  but  the  flesh  and  blood  without  the  bones. 

More  unfortunate  as  a  group  characteristic  was  the  use  of  lan- 
guage. Hunt  was  one  of  the  most  just  appraisers  of  contemporary 
literature  that  ever  lived,  yet,  curiously  enough,  his  mind  was  at  the 
same  time  woefully  prolific  in  bad  theories  of  art.  All  his  good  judg- 
ment seemed  to  revive  at  the  sight  of  something  already  done  and 
vanish  before  something  yet  to  do.  He  evolved  a  vicious,  forced, 

[  171  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

and  artificial  poetic  diction,  a  matter  fully  as  much  of  phrases  as  of 
words;  and  in  this  every  one  of  his  verse  satellites  except  Shelley  at 
times  followed  him.  It  consisted  partly  in  the  use  of  colloquial  ex- 
pressions for  dignified  poetry,  partly  in  coining  of  unnatural  and 
unidiomatic  expressions,  and  so  ran  into  two  extremes  at  once.  Thus 
Hunt  talks  about  "the  clumpy  bays"  and  "the  gazel  with  his  lamp- 
ing eyes."  Keats  tells  of  a  priest  "begirt  with  ministring  looks," 
and  mothers  who  fill  their  script  with  "needments."  Reynolds  can 
speak  of  a  lady's  "easy  shoulder"  and  her  hand  "so  sonnet-sweet." 
This,  however,  was  mere  froth  above  the  seething  ideas  in  the  lit- 
erary melting  pot;  and  these  superficial  blemishes  might  be  ignored, 
had  not  Blackwood's  and  the  Quarterly  by  savage  emphasis  on 
them  made  them  part  of  literary  history.  The  poets  in  question  were 
outgrowing  their  defects;  and  Hunt  criticised  in  Keats  the  very 
faults  which  his  own  example  had  encouraged. 

Every  group  or  eddy  so  far  mentioned  had  some  metre  which  it 
employed  frequently  and  other  groups  rarely,  and  which  became  to 
a  moderate  degree  characteristic  of  it.  The  Bristol  and  Lake  poets 
clung  to  blank  verse,  which  they  used  in  non-dramatic  poetry  more 
than  all  their  contemporaries  combined.  The  Scotch  authors  loved 
the  varying  ballad  metres  and  closely  related  octosyllabics.  For  all 
London  poets  the  most  characteristic  metre  was  some  variety  of  the 
pentameter  couplet,  whether  the  polished  and  compact  verse  of  Pope 
or  the  fluid  and  easy  style  of  Chaucer,  both  of  whom  had  been 
London  men,  and  had  left  in  their  former  haunts  a  tradition  more 
vividly  alive  than  elsewhere.  The  Holland  House  authors  preferred 
either  the  pure  Pope  tradition  or  Crabbers  narrative  variant,  which 
Byron  used  in  so  many  romantic  tales.  The  Hunt  group  never  imi- 
tated Pope  but  made  freer  the  freedom  of  Dryden,  or  preferred,  as 
Keats  put  it  modestly. 

To  stammer  where  old  Chaucer  us^d  to  sing. 

With  the  influence  of  Chaucer  they  mingled  that  of  Spenser.  He  was 
par  excellence  the  literary  idol  of  this  group,  as  Milton  was  of  the 
Stowey  or  Lake  poets,  and  Pope  or  Addison  of  the  Holland  House 
writers.  Leigh  Hunt  at  twelve  imitated  Spenser  in  several  hundred 

[  172  ] 


THE  EDDY  AROUND  LEIGH  HUNT 

lines  of  a  poem  called  "The  Fairy  Ring."  In  1 813  he  "never  stepped 
out-of-doors  without  a  book  in  my  hand,  mostly  a  volume  of  Spenser 
or  Mil  top."  His  oldest  daughter  "was  christened  Mary  after  my 
motEer,  and  Florimel  after  one  of  Spenser's  heroines."  Procter,  writ- 
ing of  a  period  some  years  later,  tells  us  that  Hunt  "liked  -^ilifitn 
more,  and  Spenser  far  more,  than  Shakespeare,"  and  that  he  had  a 
line  from  "The  Faerie  Queene"  in  gilt  letters  over  the  door  of  his 
study.  The  boy  Keats,  three  or  four  years  before  he  met  Hunt,  went 
through  the  first  volume  of  that  poets'  poem  "as  a  young  horse  would 
through  a  spring  meadow — ramping."  His  earliest  known  verses  are 
"Lines  in  Imitation  of  Spenser."  He  inspired  the  devoted  Severn 
with  the  same  enthusiasm.  When  it  was  announced  that  the  theme 
for  the  Grand  Prize  in  Historical  Painting  would  be  Book  I,  Canto  X, 
of  "The  Faerie  Queene,"  Keats  and  Severn  felt  that  the  world  and 
its  opportunities  were  now  at  their  feet;  and  the  latter  eventually 
won  the  prize,  his  first  artistic  triumph.  The  stanza  of  Spenser  was 
only  occasionally  used  by  Hunt  and  his  friends;  but  they  had  so 
filled  themselves  with  the  atmosphere  of  "The  Faerie  Queene"  that 
their  pentameter  couplets  ofteii  seem  more  like  it  than  the  nine-line 
stanzas  of  "Childe  Harold."  Their  favorite  metre  was  a  flower  from 
Chaucer's  garden  cross-fertilized  with  Spenserian  pollen. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  the  distinction  between  their  couplets 
and  those  of  Rogers,  Byron,  Moore,  and  Campbell,  though  generally 
valid,  was  not  always  marked.  That  particular  metre  was  then  in  a 
stage  of  rapid  transition;  and  Pope's  "Dunciad,"  Byron's  "English 
Bards,"  Rogers's  "Human  Life,"  Byron's  "Corsair,"  Moore's 
"Veiled  Prophet,"  Hunt's  "Rimini,"  and  Keats's  "Endymion"  would 
read  like  steps  in  a  gradual  evolution,  did  not  social  and  chrono- 
logical facts  indicate  otherwise.  The  general  line  of  cleavage,  how- 
ever, is  reasonably  obvious,  even  if  Hunt  did  say  that  after  "Rimini" 
he  had  the  pleasure  "of  seeing  all  the  reigning  poets,  without  excep- 
tion, break  up  their  own  heroic  couplets  into  freer  modulation 
(which  they  never  afterwards  abandoned)." 

This  romantic  variation  of  the  couplet,  as  it  has  been  called,  with 
its  run-on  lines  and  couplets,  its  feminine  endings  and  lightly 
stressed  endings,  with  its  luxury  and  languor,  its  occasional  mawk- 

[  173  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

ishness  and  unfailing  music,  plays  a  large  part  in  the  volumes  of  all 
the  "suburban"  poets.  Hunt  used  it  for  "Rimini,"  "Hero  and 
Leander,"  "Abou  Ben  Adhem,"  "Jaffar,"  and  many  a  less-known 
poem.  Keats,  unlike  Hunt,  did  not  usually  rise  to  his  highest  level 
in  this  rhythm,  but  about  half  of  his  non-dramatic  verse  is  written 
in  it:  "I  stood  tiptoe,"  "Calidore,"  "Sleep  and  Poetry,"  "Endym- 
ion,"  and  the  rhyming  Epistles.  "Lamia"  is  the  same  movement 
braced  into  vigor  by  Dryden.  It  was  in  this  medium  that  he  voiced 
the  prayer  which  unpitying  gods  refused: 

O  for  ten  years,  that  I  may  overwhelm 

Myself  in  poesy;  so  I  may  do  the  deed 

That  my  own  soul  has  to  itself  decreed. 

Then  will  I  pass  the  countries  that  I  see 

In  long  perspective,  and  continually 

Taste  their  pure  fountains.  First  the  realm  I'll  pass 

Of  Flora,  and  old  Pan:  sleep  in  the  grass, 

Feed  upon  apples  red,  and  strawberries. 

And  choose  each  pleasure  that  my  fancy  sees. 

Reynolds  plays  on  the  same  instrument  in  "The  Garden  of  Flor- 
ence" : 

O,  lovers  are  long  watchers  of  the  night! 
Watchers  of  coiling  darkness — of  the  light — 
Of  the  cold  window-pane,  whereon  the  moon 
Casteth  her  sallow  smile  in  night's  mid-noon — 
Of  the  unwearied  stars  that  watch  on  high 
As  though  they  were  lone  lovers  in  the  sky. 

Practically  the  same  metre,  only  varied  by  occasional  alternate 
rhymes,  is  the  favorite  in  narrative  of  Procter,  the  main  note,  for 
example,  though  with  numerous  variations,  in  the  "Sicilian  Tale." 
He  used  it  in  "Marcian  Colonna,"  and  in  many  shorter  poems  of 
that  volume,  as,  for  example,  in  "A  Voice": 

Oh!  what  a  voice  is  silent.  It  was  soft 
As  mountain-echoes,  when  the  winds  aloft — 
The  gentle  winds  of  summer  meet  in  caves; 
Or  when  in  sheltered  places  the  white  waves 

[  174  ] 


THE  EDDY  AROUND  LEIGH  HUNT 

Are  'wakened  into  music,  as  the  breeze 

Dimples  and  stems  the  current:  or  as  trees 

Shaking  their  green  locks  in  the  days  of  June: 

Or  Delphic  girls  when  to  the  maiden  moon 

They  sang  harmonious  pray'rs:   or  sounds  that  come 

(However  near)  like  a  faint  distant  hum 

Out  of  the  grass,  from  which  mysterious  birth 

We  guess  the  busy  secrets  of  the  earth. 

— ^Like  the  low  voice  of  Syrinx,  when  she  ran 

Into  the  forests  from  Arcadian  Pan. 

In  addition  to  their  worship  of  sensuousness  and  of  Spenser,  their 
artificial  diction  and  luscious  metre,  a  nobler  badge  of  the  group  was 
their  love  of  the  Greeks  and  of  the  Greek  sense  of  beauty,  though 
that  cult  at  times  degenerated  in  their  hands  into  a  beauty-worship 
almost  decadent.  The  eighteenth  century  and  the  first  decade  of  the 
nineteenth  had  shown  little  genuine  knowledge  of  Greek  art  and 
literature,  little  tendency  to  imitate  what  was  noblest  in  their  tech- 
nique or  spirit.  In  fact  Joseph  Cottle,  who,  as  an  ex-publisher,  should 
have  some  idea  of  public  taste,  wrote  in  the  Preface  to  his  second 
edition  of  "Alfred":  "Whoever  in  these  times,  founds  a  machinery 
on  the  mythology  of  the  Greeks,  will  do  so  at  his  peril."  During  the 
second  decade  of  the  new  century  there  began  a  marked  stream  of 
Hellenized  poetry,  which  has  continued  ever  since.  It  ran  at  first 
in  two  currents,  the  popular  one  of  Byron  and  the  unpopular  one 
of  the  "suburban"  poets,  the  latter,  as  frequently  happens,  event- 
ually becoming  the  greater  of  the  two.  Apparently  the  stream  of 
influence  began  with  Haydon.  In  1808,  eight  years  before  the  Elgin 
Marbles  were  placed  on  public  exhibition,  he  was  admitted  to  see 
those  noble  examples  of  classic  sculpture  in  the  owner's  private 
rooms.  "I  shall  never  forget  the  horses'  heads,"  he  tells  us,  "the  feet 
in  the  metopes !  I  felt  as  if  a  divine  truth  had  blazed  inwardly  upon 
my  mind,  and  I  knew  that  they  would  at  last  rouse  the  art  of  Europe 
from  its  slumber  in  the  darkness."  At  his  next  visit  he  brought  the 
famous  painter  Fuseli,  who  shared  his  enthusiasm,  and  strode  about 
crying  in  his  broken  English,  "De  Greeks  were  godes!  de  Greeks 
were  godes!"  For  three  months  Haydon  drew  from  these  models, 

[  175  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

working  twelve,  fourteen,  and  fifteen  hours  at  a  time,  and  read 
Homer  in  English  to  stir  his  fancy  for  the  work.  How  much  of  this 
enthusiasm  he  communicated  to  his  friends  Hunt  and  Hazlitt  we 
are  left  to  guess;  but  they  both  grew  to  share  it.  In  1 8 19  Hunt  wrote 
to  Mary  Shelley:  "What  divine  writers  those  Greek  tragedians  are! 
I  should  quarrel  more  with  the  unjust  and  shocking  superstition 
about  history,  upon  which  their  writings  are  founded,  were  they  not 
perpetually  yearning  after  every  species  of  beauty,  moral  and 
physical."  In  the  Preface  to  his  "Foliage"  (1818)  he  tells  us  that 
"the  main  features  of  the  book  are  a  love  of  sociality,  of  the  country, 
and  of  the  fine  imagination  of  the  Greeks,"  and  speaks  of  "that 
beautiful  mythology,  which  it  is  not  one  of  the  least  merits  of  the 
new  school  to  be  restoring  to  its  proper  estimation."  Hazlitt  in 
"Table  Talk"  says  of  statues  that  he  "never  liked  any  till  I  saw  the 
Elgin  marbles."  Elsewhere  he  declared  that  "Rome  and  Athens  filled 
a  place  in  the  history  of  mankind,  which  can  never  be  occupied 
again."  In  words  that  remind  us  of  Keats^s  "Grecian  Urn,"  Hazlitt 
said  of  Greek  statues:  "The  sense  of  perfect  form  nearly  occupies 
the  whole  mind,  and  hardly  suffers  it  to  dwell,  on  any  other  feeling. 
It  seems  enough  for  them  to  be,  without  acting  or  suffering.  Their 
forms  are  ideal,  spiritual.  Their  beauty  is  power.  By  their  beauty 
they  are  raised  above  the  frailties  of  pain  or  passion;  by  their  beauty 
they  are  deified."  In  181 6,  the  very  year  in  which  the  Hunt  group 
drew  to  a  head,  the  Elgin  Marbles  were  placed  on  public  exhibition 
in  the  British  Museum.  Keats,  says  William  Sharp,  "went  again  and 
again  to  see  the  Elgin  marbles,  and  would  sit  for  an  hour  or  more 
at  a  time  beside  them  rapt  in  revery.  On  one  such  occasion  Severn 
came  upon  the  young  poet,  with  eyes  shining  so  brightly  and  face 
so  lit  up  by  some  visionary  rapture,  that  he  stole  quietly  away 
without  intrusion."  Earlier  in  181 6  Hay  don  had  published  in  Hunt's 
Examiner  (as  well  as  in  The  Champion)  a  fiery  defence  of  the  cele- 
brated marbles,  in  which  he  ranked  them  "above  all  other  works 
of  art  in  the  world."  In  the  meanwhile  we  must  not  overlook  the 
influence  of  Byron,  who  had  been  the  friend  of  Hunt  during  the 
latter's  imprisonment  and  for  four  years  the  most  popular  poet  in 
Great  Britain.  The  second  canto  of  "Childe  Harold"  was  full  of 

[  176  ] 


THE  EDDY  AROUND  LEIGH  HUNT 

Hellenic  atmosphere.  So  were  the  opening  lines  of  "The  Giaour" 
and  of  the  second  canto  of  "Abydos,"  poems  which  Byron  had  sent 
to  Hunt  during  the  latter 's  imprisonment. 

Contemporary  with  the  influence  of  Byron  and  Greek  statuary 
came  also  that  of  German  romantic  criticism.  In  1815  the  lectures 
of  A.  W.  Schlegel  appeared  in  an  English  translation,  and  the  fol- 
lowing spring  were  reviewed  by  Hazlitt  at  great  length  in  The  Edin- 
burgh. The  review  said  that  SchlegePs  work  had  "too  much  of 
everything,  but  especially  of  Greece";  yet  in  a  year  or  two  Hazlitt 
had  been  converted  to  a  Hellenism  as  reverent  as  that  of  Schlegel 
himself.  The  Grecian  enthusiasm  of  the  Hunt  circle  was  the  English 
analogue  of  the  Hellenic  tendency  in  Germany  a  few  years  earlier, 
in  the  work  of  Goethe,  Schiller,  Holderlin,  and  the  romantic  critics. 
The  result  was  a  wave  of  Hellenism  which  touched  almost  every 
poet  and  painter  of  Hunt's  group.  He  himself  retold  the  story  of 
Hero  and  Leander  and  in  "The  Nymphs"  gave  a  poetic  panorama 
of  "fair-limbed  Dryads,"  Hamadryads,  Napeads,  the  Limniad  "who 
takes  Her  pleasure  in  the  lakes,"  and  "The  Oreads  that  frequent 
the  lifted  mountains."  Peacock,  in  181 8,  just  after  his  brief  and 
rather  tenuous  connection  with  the  group,  published  "Rhodo- 
daphne,"  a  wildly  romantic  legend  of  ancient  Hellas,  with  palaces 
that  vanish,  malignant  deities,  and  dead  brides  that  come  to  life. 
Procter's  "Flood  of  Thessaly"  (1823)  develops  in  respectable 
Miltonic  verse  the  story  of  Deucalion  and  Pyrrha,  ending  with 
Deucalion's  Miltonic  vision  of  the  coming  glories  of  ancient  Hellas. 
Procter  before  this  had  written  a  brief  masque,  "The  Rape  of 
Proserpine,"  and  pastoral  dialogues  based  on  Greek  story,  also  a 
short  poem  "On  the  Statue  of  Theseus"  (one  of  the  Elgin  Marbles) 
ending: 

Methinks, 
(So  perfect  is  the  Phidian  stone)  his  sire 
The  sea-god  Neptune,  hath  in  anger  stopped 
The  current  of  Hfe,  and  with  his  trident  touch 
Hath  struck  him  into  marble. 

Charles  Wells  in  his  "Stories  After  Nature"  (1822),  a  collection  of 
crude  yet  poetical  prose  narratives,  has  two  or  three  tales  from 

[  177  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

ancient  Greece;  and  in  one  of  them,  "Dion,"  he  says  that  the  original 
story  "has  the  passion,  the  dignity,  and  nature  of  the  Elgin 
Marbles."  Swinburne  has  pointed  out  in  this  little  book  "the  per- 
ceptible influence  of  Leigh  Hunt  in  some  of  the  stories."  Lamb  has 
a  similar  allusion  to  the  famous  sculptures  in  his  essay  on  beggars. 
Even  Reynolds  wrote  a  volume  entitled  "The  Naiad,"  though  there 
is  nothing  very  Greek  about  it.  Haydon  preferred  Hebraic  to  Hel- 
lenic subjects  for  his  paintings;  but  he  said  of  the  Elgin  Marbles: 
"I  gained  from  these  sublime  relics  the  leading  principles  of  my 
practice."  Severn  was  hardly  launched  as  an  artist  before  his  journey 
to  Italy;  but  after  that  he  painted  several  scenes,  indifferently  good, 
on  Greek  subjects:  "The  Death  of  Alcibiades,"  "Alexander  the 
Great  Reading  Homer,"  and  "Greek  Hill-Shepherds  Rescuing  a 
Lamb  from  an  Eagle,"  the  last  founded  on  a  passage  in  Keats's 
"Hymn  to  Pan."  He  tells  us  that  on  their  voyage  to  Italy,  Keats 
"made  it  all  live  again,  that  old  antique  world  when  the  Greek 
galleys  and  Tyrhenian  sloops  brought  northward  strange  tales  of 
what  was  happening  in  Hellas  and  the  mysterious  East."  And  Rome 
after  their  arrival  would  never  have  been  a  joy  to  the  young  painter 
"had  it  not  been  for  Keats 's  talks  with  me  about  the  Greek  spirit, — 
the  Religion  of  the  Beautiful,  the  Religion  of  Joy,  as  he  used  to  call 
it.  All  that  was  finest  in  sculpture — and,  as  I  came  to  see  directly 
or  indirectly,  all  that  was  finest  too  in  painting,  in  everything — was 
due  to  that  supreme  influence."  Lamb  tells  us  how  Procter  radiated 
a  similar,  though  more  transitory,  enthusiasm.  "Barry  Cornwall  has 
his  tritons  and  his  nereids  gambolling  before  him  in  nocturnal 
visions.  ...  It  was  after  reading  the  noble  Dream  of  this 
poet,  that  my  fancy  ran  strong  upon  these  marine  spectra.  .  .  . 
Methought  I  was  upon  the  ocean  billows  at  some  sea  nuptials,  riding 
and  mounted  high,  with  the  customary  train  sounding  their  conches 
before  me." 
/*  If  there  was  so  much  Hellenism  among  the  minor  figures  of  the 
eddy,  we  are  not  surprised  that  it  permeates  the  best  work  of  the 
two  principal  figures,  Keats  and  Shelley,  "both  Greek  poets,"  as 
Severn  wrote  of  them  years  after  their  deaths.  The  Greek  part  of 
Keats  appears  to  have  been  born  in  him.  As  a  boy  he  lived  with 

[  178  ] 


THE  EDDY  AROUND  LEIGH  HUNT 

Tooke's  "Pantheon,"  Lempriere's  "Classical  Dictionary,"  and 
Spence's  "Polymetis"  until  he  almost  knew  them  by  heart.  Yet  his 
first  volume,  though  it  contains  a  number  of  incidental  allusions  to 
classic  mythology,  buries  these  under  a  mass  of  pretty  but  childish 
pseudo-medievalism,  wherein  neither  thought,  story,  nor  atmos- 
phere are  genuinely  Hellenic. 

In  "Endymion,"  however,  though  the  hazy  glamour  of  Spenser 
is  over  it  all,  one  breathes  true  Athenian  air.  "I  hope  I  have  not  in 
too  late  a  day  touched  the  beautiful  mythology  of  Greece,  and  dulled 
its  brightness,"  wrote  the  author  in  his  Preface.  The  suburban 
prettiness  of  his  environment  was  none  too  much  like  that  of  the 
great  ancients,  where 

The  mountains  look  on  Marathon, 
And  Marathon  looks  on  the  sea. 

Instead  he  opens: 

So  I  will  begin 
Now  while  I  cannot  hear  the  city's  din; 
Now  while  the  early  budders  are  just  new. 

Instead  of  Alcman's  "peaks  and  ravines  of  the  mountains,"  "head- 
lands and  torrent  beds,"  Keats  turns  Mt.  Latmos  into  a  Hampstead 
park. 

Paths  there  were  many. 
Winding  through  palmy  fern,  and  rushes  fenny, 
And  ivy  banks;  all  leading  pleasantly 
To  a  wide  lawn. 

But  when  he  once  gets  under  way,  with  Arethusa  calling  through 
the  caverns  and  "the  giant  sea  above,"  Hampstead  gives  place  to 
Hellas. 

Far  as  the  mariner  on  highest  mast 

Can  see  all  round  upon  the  calmed  vast. 

So  wide  was  Neptune's  hall.  .  .  .  They  stood  in  dreams 

Till  Triton  blew  his  horn.  The  palace  rang; 

The  Nereids  danced;  the  Syrens  faintly  sang. 

And  the  great  Sea-King  bowed  his  dripping  head. 

[  179  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

In  the  volume  of  1820  "Lamia,"  the  "Ode  on  a  Grecian  Urn," 
"Ode  to  Psyche,"  and  "Hyperion"  are  as  nobly  Hellenic  as  any 
poems  in  the  language.  The  pretty  suburban  flower  gardens  are 
forgotten;  and  the  poet  can  write  of  conflicts  and  tragedies, 

Too  huge  for  mortal  tongue  or  pen  of  scribe. 

Early  influences  on  Shelley  had  not  been  Hellenizing.  His  boy- 
hood love  in  literature  was  for  the  novels  of  Ann  Radcliffe  or  similar 
pabulum;  and  his  prentice  work  in  both  poetry  and  prose  was  at 
times  an  orgy  of  the  crudest,  most  hair-raising  Gothic  romance. 
Then  Godwin's  "Political  Justice"  revolutionized  his  whole  nature. 
"It  materially  influenced  my  character,"  Shelley  wrote  to  the  author 
in  1 81 2,  "and  I  rose  from  its  perusal  a  wiser  and  a  better  man.  I  was 
no  longer  the  votary  of  romance.  ...  I  beheld,  in  short,  that  I  had 
duties  to  perform."  In  this  temper  he  produced  the  anarchistic 
"Queen  Mab,"  which  gave  more  evidence  of  increased  virtue  than 
of  increased  wisdom.  It  was  in  this  mood  that  he  visited  the  Lake 
\  region  in  181 2.  Southey,  to  whom  several  contemporaries  agree  that 
/  Shelley  had  a  marked  personal  resemblance,  wrote  of  the  incident: 
)  "Here  is  a  man  at  Keswick  who  acts  upon  me  as  my  own  ghost 
>  would  do.  He  is  just  what  I  was  in  1794."  Then  came  another  revul- 
^sion,  which  produced  the  beautiful  but  by  no  means  Grecian 
"Alastor";  and  soon  after  that  Shelley  became  intimate  with  Hunt. 
Hardly  a  trace  of  special  enthusiasm  for  the  Greeks  appears  in 
Shelley's  poetry  either  before  or  during  that  intimacy;  but  imme- 
diately after  its  end  and  his  journey  to  Italy  in  181 8  he  began 
lighting  his  torches  at  Hellenic  altar-fires.  It  is  a  natural  assumption 
that  the  Greek  enthusiasm  of  the  group  woke  the  dormant  Grecian 
in  his  soul.  In  181 9  he  wrote  to  Peacock:  "O,  but  for  that  series  of 
wretched  wars  which  terminated  in  the  Roman  conquest  of  the 
world;  but  for  the  Christian  religion,  which  put  the  finishing  stroke 
on  the  ancient  system;  but  for  those  changes  that  conducted 
Athens  to  its  ruin, — to  what  an  eminence  might  not  humanity  have 
arrived!"  Later  in  the  same  year  he  wrote  to  John  Gisborne:  "Were 
not  the  Greeks  a  glorious  people?  What  is  there,  as  Job  says  of  the 
Leviathan,  like  unto  them?  If  the  army  of  Nicias  had  not  been 

[  180  ] 


THE  EDDY  AROUND  LEIGH  HUNT 

defeated  under  the  walls  of  Syracuse;  if  the  Athenians  had,  acquir- 
ing Sicily,  held  the  balance  between  Rome  and  Carthage,  sent 
garrisons  to  the  Greek  colonies  in  the  South  of  Italy,  Rome  might 
have  been  all  that  its  intellectual  condition  entitled  it  to  be,  a  tribu- 
tary, not  the  conqueror  of  Greece."  In  his  posthimious  "Essay  on 
the  Revival  of  Literature"  Shelley  speaks  of  "Grecian  literature, — 
the  finest  the  world  has  ever  produced." 

These  utterances  went  hand  in  hand  with  creative  poetry  on  Greek 
themes.  The  drama  of  "Hellas"  was  suggested  by  Aeschylus' 
"Persians,"  and,  with  all  its  faults,  reveals  the  great  model  in  the 
noble  closing  chorus. 

Another  Athens  shall  arise. 

And  to  remoter  time 
Bequeath,  like  sunset  to  the  skies, 

The  splendor  of  its  prime. 

Apollo  walks  "over  the  mountains  and  the  waves."  Arethusa  leaves 
"her  couch  of  snows  In  the  Acroceraunian  mountains."  In  the 
"Hymn  of  Pan"  we  are  among 

The  Sileni,  and  Sylvans,  and  Fauns, 
And  the  Nymphs  of  the  woods  and  waves. 

Yet  Shelley  at  bottom,  unlike  Keats,  had  more  Greek  enthusiasm 
than  Greek  spirit.  This  fact  becomes  plainest  in  the  "Prometheus 
Unbound."  The  play  begins  as  a  Greek  drama,  and  after  the  first 
act  drifts  rapidly  away  from  both  action  and  psychology  into  a 
medley  of  vaguely  connected,  though  beautiful,  atmospheric  out- 
bursts. It  is  like  a  comet,  a  burning  head  of  drama,  trailing  a  tenuous 
mist  of  song.  On  the  lyric  and  emotional  mind  of  Shelley,  so  much 
less  favorable  to  thorough  comprehension  of  any  foreign  literature 
than  the  more  narrative,  descriptive,  and  analytic  inspiration  of 
Keats,  this  abrupt  inpouring  of  ancient  Athenian  culture,  like  a 
cataract  falling  across  a  sunbeam,  produced  a  glorious  iridescence, 
which  is  associated  with  the  cause  but  hardly  akin  to  it.  Had  the 
two  poets  lived,  we  believe  that  the  Hellenism  of  Shelley  would  have 
proved  a  passing  enthusiasm,  that  of  Keats  a  lasting  faith. 

From  1815  to  1822  nearly  all  poetry  on  Hellenic  themes  came 

[  181  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

from  the  Hunt  Eddy.  Wordsworth  produced  his  noble  ^^Laodamia" 
and  "Dion,"  both  written  about  1814,  and  in  the  following  year  said 
of  the  Elgin  Marbles:  "A  man  must  be  senseless  as  a  clod,  or  as 
perverse  as  a  fiend,  not  to  be  enraptured  with  them."  But  this  in 
him  was  only  a  temporary  ripple.  Byron's  enthusiasm,  which  was 
more  that  of  the  traveler  than  that  of  the  true  Hellenic  vates,  lay 
dormant  from  "The  Corsair"  in  1814  to  "The  Isles  of  Greece"  in 
1 82 1.  There  was  a  growing  interest  in  Grecian  material,  as  in  all 
things  foreign  and  historic;  and  this,  with  Byron's  example,  called 
from  Mrs.  Hemans  a  lengthy  poem,  "Modern  Greece,"  as  well  as 
a  number  of  brief  lyrics;  but  the  chief  credit  for  enriching  modern 
poetry  from  Greek  models  and  mythology  must  rest  with  Keats  and 
Shelley  and  their  less-known  fellow  workers  who  helped  to  create 
the  atmosphere  in  which  they  composed. 

Two  other  literary  movements  which  the  Hunt  Eddy  helped  to 
i^orward,  but  which  will  be  dwelt  on  separately  later,  were  the  Italian 
and  the  Elizabethan.  Hunt,  Keats,  Shelley,  Reynolds,  Procter, 
Lloyd,  and  Wells  all  at  times  drew  material  from  the  great  Italian 
quarry.  Hunt  from  early  manhood  had  been  an  enthusiast  for  Italy 
and  its  literature.  As  a  result,  probably,  of  his  friendship,  Haydon 
about  1 81 2  "was  seized  with  a  fury  for  Italian"  that  vented  its 
temporary  enthusiasm  on  the  sonnets  of  Petrarch.  Their  friends, 
the  Novellos,  were  partly  of  Italian  blood.  Lamb,  Hazlitt,  Procter, 
Wells,  and  Cowden  Clarke  were  connected  with  the  growing  study 
of  the  Elizabethan  dramatists.  This  group  of  "suburban"  poets, 
with  all  its  faults,  formed  the  watershed  where  old  influences  died 
out  and  new  streams  of  influence  flowed  down  into  the  later  nine- 
teenth century.  Most  of  what  afterward  proved  great  germinated 
with  them.  Among  other  tendencies,  they  foreshadowed  the  later 
pre-Raphaelites.  As  already  noted,  their  social  life  approximated 
the  pre-Raphaelite  tjrpe  in  its  union  of  different  arts,  music, 
painting,  sculpture,  and  poetry.  Professor  Elton  finds  "the  move- 
ment of  parts  of  7ason'  or  'The  Earthly  Paradise'  "  forecast  in 
Keats's  "Lamia";  and  his  "Eve  of  St.  Mark"  "is  no  collateral  or 
remote,  but  a  direct  and  near  ancestor  of  Tennyson's  'St.  Agnes'  Eve' 
and  the  drawings  by  Millais  and  his  companions."  In  1847  Ruskin 

[  182  ] 


THE  EDDY  AROUND  LEIGH  HUNT 

and  Severn  were  in  sympathetic  correspondence  over  "the  want  of 
feeling  for  Religious  Art  in  England";  and  Ruskin  was  pouring  in 
Severn's  apparently  sympathetic  ear  his  pre-Raphaelite  propa- 
ganda: "I  fully  anticipate  seeing  the  Carraccis  and  Murillos  and 
Carlo  Dolcis,  and  coarse  copies  of  Titian  and  Rubens,  and  all  the 
tribe  of  the  potsherd  painters,  and  drunkard  painters,  cleared  out 
one  by  one  from  our  Galleries;  their  places  supplied  by  Angelico, 
Francia,  and  Perugino." 

Yet  this  eddy,  so  rich  in  suggestion  for  great  poetry,  was  not  of 
a  nature  to  bring  great  poetry  into  perfect  maturity.  It  was  a 
hothouse  nursery  for  literary  plants,  which  could  only  reach  their 
full  blossom  when  transplanted  elsewhere.  Of  Shelley's  best  work, 
"Alastor"  and  the  "Hymn  to  the  Intellectual  Beauty"  were  written 
before  he  became  identified  with  the  group,  all  the  rest  after  he 
went  to  Italy.  The  first  two  volumes  of  Keats,  though  they  do  not 
deserve  the  scathing  contempt  of  Swinburne,  would  never  make 
the  author  great;  his  third  volume,  on  which  his  fame  depends,  was 
written  in  a  spirit  of  decided  revulsion  against  the  atmosphere  of 
the  Hunt  circle.  By  the  end  of  1818  this  is  his  mood:  "Hunt  keeps 
on  in  his  old  way — I  am  completely  tired  of  it  all.  He  has  lately  •^ 
published  a  Pocket  Book  called  the  Literary  Pocket-Book — full  of 
the  most  sickening  stuff  you  can  imagine";  or  again:  "The  night 
we  went  to  Novello's  there  was  a  complete  set  to  of  music  and 
punning.  I  was  so  completely  tired  of  it  that  if  I  were  to  follow  my 
own  inclinations  I  should  never  meet  any  one  of  that  set  again,  not  *^ 
even  Hunt."  Allowance  must  be  made  for  Keats's  morbid  condi- 
tion— ,  he  himself  contributed  some  of  the  "sickening  stuff"  to  the 
Pocket-Book — ,  and  he  had  been  influenced  by  a  breach  between 
Hunt  and  Haydon;  yet  it  is  unquestionable  that  the  style  and  models 
of  his  later  poems  diverge  from  those  of  the  Hunt  group,  retaining 
certain  traces  of  that  mother  movement  mingled  with  more  virile 
blood.  We  find  the  same  attitude  in  Shelley,  who  owed  much  to  the 
Hunt  circle  yet  did  best  when  away  from  it.  In  1820  he  wrote  from 
Italy:  "Keats's  new  volume  has  arrived  to  us,  and  the  fragment^ 
called  ^Hyperion'  promises  for  him  that  he  is  destined  to  become  one 
of  the  first  writers  of  the  age.  His  other  things  are  imperfect  enough, 

[  183  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

and,  what  is  worse,  written  in  the  bad  sort  of  style  which  is  becom- 
ing fashionable  among  those  who  fancy  that  they  are  imitating  Hunt 
and  Wordsworth." 

All  the  men  connected  with  this  eddy  were  the  subject  of  press 
hostility  as  no  group  of  English  authors  before  had  been  in  literary 
history.  Even  Procter,  popular  both  as  a  poet  and  a  man,  was  at- 
tacked by  Blackwood's  for  his  effeminacy.  Lamb  was  a  "Cockney 
Scribbler,"  Haydon  the  "Raphael  of  the  Cockneys,"  and  Hazlitt's 
"pimpled  face"  gleamed  like  Bardolph's  nose  through  the  shadows 
of  vituperation.  Keats  was  a  "bardling"  and  a  "mannikin";  Hunt, 
author  of  the  "smutty  'Story  of  Rimini.'  "  Even  death  did  not  ap- 
pease that  hostility.  When  the  news  of  Shelley's  drowning  reached 
London,  an  evening  journal  remarked,  "He  will  now  know  whether 
there  is  a  Hell  or  not."  The  pathetic  inscription  on  Keats's  tomb- 
stone for  years  evoked  only  the  flippant  comment  that  enraged 
Severn:  "Here  lies  one  whose  name  was  writ  in  water,  and  his  works 
in  milk  and  water" 

The  original  cause  of  these  attacks  was  political.  Hunt  had  been 
/^a  champion  of  the  Liberal  party,  and  often  savage  and  personal 
in  his  remarks,  thereby  drawing  down  on  all  around  him  the  Tory 
lightnings  of  Blackwood's  and  The  Quarterly.  But  there  was  social 
prejudice  also.  The  Holland  House  poets,  who  at  times  were  friendly 
and  at  other  times  might  have  been,  often  showed  hostility  to  all 
but  Shelley  and  Procter  on  the  ground  that  the  others  were  "Cock- 
neys," poets  of  a  life  that  lacked  breeding  and  cosmopolitan  breadth. 
This  aversion  was  increased  in  Byron  and  Campbell  by  a  partly 
erroneous  belief  that  the  "Cockneys"  were  militant  enemies  of  their 
idol  Pope.  Also  behind  the  hostility  of  Blackwood's  and  the  passive 
acquiescence  in  it  of  Scott — so  unlike  his  usual  generous  nature — 
there  was  a  certain  amount  of  half-unconscious  race  antipathy.  The 
"Cockneys"  were  South  of  England  men — except  Hazlitt,  who  was 
Irish,  and  the  Novellos,  who  were  part  Italian.  They  belonged  to 
another  world  than  that  of  the  rugged  north,  and  when  facing  it 
could  neither  understand  nor  be  understood.  Keats  felt  no  enthu- 
siasm about  his  Scotch  trip,  and  found  that  "the  clouds,  the  sky,  the 
houses,  all  seem  anti-Grecian  and  anti-Charlemagnish."  Hunt  had 

[  184  ] 


THE  EDDY  AROUND  LEIGH  HUNT 

written  earlier:  "There  is  a  vein  in  Smollett — a  Scotch  vein — which 
is  always  disgusting  to  people  of  delicacy."  "I  have  been  trying  all 
my  life  to  like  Scotchmen,  and  am  obliged  to  desist  from  the  experi- 
ment in  despair,"  said  Lamb  in  "Imperfect  Sympathies,"  voicing 
one  prejudice  at  least,  if  nothing  else,  which  he  shared  with  his 
fellow  Londoner,  Dr.  Johnson.  In  those  days  the  jealousy  between 
the  two  national  capitals  was  a  very  genuine  thing.  Back  of  all  this, 
there  were  literary  reasons  for  the  Hunt  group's  unpopularity.  Their 
bad  poetry  often  was  unmanly,  and  their  good  poetry  was  a  voice 
crying  in  the  wilderness  twenty  years  too  soon.  The  storm  that 
broke  over  them  was  unjust  and  regrettable,  but  might  easily  have 
been  expected.  Perhaps  too  much  has  already  been  said  about  this 
unhappy  war  between  literary  brethren.  John  Wilson  in  1834  gen- 
erously retracted  all  past  attacks  on  the  "Cockneys";  and  it  is  to 
his  dignified  words  that  the  curtain  should  fall  on  bygone  tragedy 
and  bygone  billingsgate:  "The  animosities  are  mortal,  but  the 
humanities  live  forever." 


[  i8S  ] 


CHAPTER  IX 

The  Elizabethan  Current  and  The  London  Magazine 


Connected  with  the  eddy  around  Hunt,  and  therefore  best  taken 
up  immediately  after  it,  are  two  minor  literary  movements,  one  a 
thin,  struggling  stream  for  many  years,  the  other  a  brief  but  more 
widespreading  eddy,  into  which  part  of  the  first  may  be  said  to  have 
disembogued. 

The  line  of  Elizabethan  development  ran  tangent  to  the  circles 
of  Bristol  and  Lake  poets,  "Cockneys"  and  London  Magazine 
authors,  touching  them  all  without  becoming  thoroughly  identified 
with  any  one.  It  began  as  a  scholarly  and  interpretative  movement, 
and  in  that  field  rendered  its  greatest  services  to  mankind;  but  it 
later  developed,  or  modified  in  their  development,  a  number  of 
poetical  closet  dramas.  There  had  been  during  the  late  eighteenth 
century  an  increase  in  popular  interest  about  Shakespeare,  and  a 
marked  improvement  in  textual  criticism.  It  remained  for  the  early 
nineteenth  century  to  furnish  a  profound  analysis  of  Shakespeare's 
drama  as  literature;  to  resurrect  forgotten  masterpieces  of  his 
humbler  brethren,  and  to  call  from  modern  pens  a  large  amount  of 
deeply  felt,  though  not  wholly  successful,  Elizabethan  imitation. 

The  current  began  with  Lamb,  Coleridge,  and  Hazlitt,  all  of 
whom  had  some  connection  at  different  periods  with  both  the 
Bristol  and  "Cockney"  eddies.  Lamb  led  the  way.  In  1796,  in  the 
golden  days  of  Pantisocracy,  he  wrote  to  Coleridge:  "I  writhe  with 
indignation  when  in  books  of  Criticism,  where  common  place  quota- 
tion is  heaped  upon  quotation,  I  find  no  mention  of  such  men  as 
Massinger,  or  B.  and  Fl.,  men  with  whom  succeeding  Dramatic 
Writers  (Otway  alone  excepted)  can  bear  no  manner  of  comparison. 

[  186  ] 


THE  ELIZABETHAN  CURRENT 

Stupid  Knox  hath  noticed  none  of  'em  among  his  extracts."  In  1801 
Lamb  wrote  to  Godwin  advocating  the  use  of  scenes  and  incidents 
from  old  dramas,  and  at  that  very  time  he  was  trying  to  write  a  new 
"As  You  Like  It"  in  his  own  abortive  "John  WoodviL"  Three  years 
later  we  find  in  Southey's  correspondence:  "I  saw  Longman  yester- 
day. ...  I  am  trying  to  make  him  publish  a  collection  of  the  scarce 
old  English  poets,  which  will  be  the  fittest  thing  in  the  world  for 
Lamb  to  manage,  if  he  likes  it."  This  troubling  of  the  mental  waters 
in  1807  evoked  the  charming  though  not  epoch-making  "Tales  from 
Shakespeare"  by  Charles  and  Mary  Lamb  jointly;  and  the  next 
year  Lamb  published  his  "Specimens  of  the  English  Dramatic  Poets 
who  lived  about  the  time  of  Shakespeare."  The  latter  is  a  milestone 
in  the  history  of  Elizabethan  influence.  Its  Preface  tells  us  how  far 
the  dust  of  oblivion  had  gathered  on  many  a  great  Elizabethan: 
"More  than  a  third  part  of  the  following  specimens  are  from  plays 
which  are  to  be  found  only  in  the  British  Museum  and  in  some 
scarce  private  libraries."  The  editor  speaks  of  Ben  Jonson,  Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher,  and  of  Massinger  (whom  Gifford  had  edited  in 
1805)  as  well  known;  and  wishes  "to  exhibit  them  in  the  same  vol- 
ume with  the  more  impressive  scenes  of  old  Marlowe,  He5rwood, 
Tourneur,  Webster,  Ford,  and  others.  To  show  what  we  have 
slighted,  while  beyond  all  proportion  we  have  cried  up  one  or  two 
favorite  names."  Years  of  loving  self-sacrifice  went  into  that  volume. 
"Do  you  remember,"  said  Mary  Lamb  to  her  brother,  "the  brown 
suit,  which  you  made  to  hang  upon  you,  till  all  your  friends  cried 
shame  upon  you,  it  grew  so  threadbare — and  all  because  of  that 
folio  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  which  you  dragged  home  late  at  night 
from  Barker's  in  Covent  Garden?  Do  you  remember  how  we  eyed  it 
for  weeks  before  we  could  make  up  our  minds  to  the  purchase?"  The 
changes  in  literary  taste  produced  by  this  book  were  slow  in  appear- 
ance but  far-reaching.  Incidentally,  besides  its  significance  for 
Elizabethans,  this  work  was  apparently  part  of  a  sudden  increase 
in  books  of  selections.  In  1804  Campbell  declared:  "It  is  a  hiatus  in 
British  Literature  that  we  have  no  specimens  of  our  best  poetry"; 
yet  Lamb,  at  about  the  time  of  his  own  publication,  wrote:  "Speci- 
mens are  becoming  fashionable.  We  have — Specimens  of  Ancient 

[  187  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

English  Poets,  Specimens  of  Modern  English  Poets,  Specimens  of 
Ancient  English  Prose  Writers,  without  end." 

That  this  kind  of  work  was  "the  fittest  thing  in  the  world  for 
Lamb  to  manage"  we  have  abundant  testimony.  The  great  past  was 
more  alive  for  him  than  the  present.  "I  am  out  of  the  world  of  read- 
ers," he  cried  a  few  months  after  the  "Specimens"  appeared.  "I 
hate  all  that  do  read,  for  they  read  nothing  but  reviews  and  new 
books.  I  gather  myself  up  unto  the  old  things."  "I  cannot  write  in 
the  modern  style,  if  I  try  ever  so  hard,"  was  his  defence  when  Mary 
thought  his  serenata  "a  little  too  old-fashioned  in  the  manner"; 
and  "when  my  sonnet  was  rejected,  I  exclaimed,  ^Damn  the  age; 
I  will  write  for  Antiquity.'  "  "His  soul  delighted  in  communion  with 
ancient  generations,"  Procter  tells  us;  "more  especially  with  men 
who  had  been  unjustly  forgotten." 

Lamb's  work  was  followed  by  the  lecture  courses  of  Coleridge  and 
Hazlitt  in  London.  Of  Coleridge's  first  series  in  1808,  little  has  been 
preserved.  In  the  winter  of  1811-12  he  spoke  "on  Shakespeare  and 
Milton  in  illustration  of  the  Principles  of  Poetry,  and  their  appli- 
cation as  grounds  of  Criticism  to  the  most  popular  works  of  later 
English  Poets,  those  of  the  living  included."  The  fragmentary 
records,  says  J.  Dykes  Campbell,  suffice  to  show  that  his  audiences 
"probably  heard  the  finest  literary  criticism  which  has  ever  been 
given  in  English."  The  popular  effect  was  considerable;  and  Byron, 
who  attended,  mentions  "Coleridge,  who  is  a  sort  of  rage  at  pres- 
ent." In  1 81 8  the  inspired  but  unpunctual  lecturer  had  more  doubtful 
success  introducing  his  audience  to  Shakespeare  and  poetical  litera- 
ture, Hazlitt  at  the  same  time,  occasionally  on  the  same  evenings, 
interpreting  the  English  poets.  The  previous  year  had  seen  Hazlitt 's 
"Characters  of  Shakespeare's  Plays,"  and  Coleridge's  tragi-comedy 
"Zapolya,"  which  was  as  much  like  Shakespeare's  "Winter's  Tale" 
as  a  bad  play  can  be  like  a  good  one.  In  1820  Hazlitt  delivered  his 
Lectures  on  the  Dramatic  Literature  of  the  Age  of  Elizabeth. 

The  work  of  Coleridge  and  Hazlitt  differed  from  that  of  Lamb 
in  two  important  respects.  Unlike  him,  they  either  ignored  or  under- 
rated the  minor  Elizabethans,  and  were  consistently  wise  and 
S)nnpathetic  only  in  their  handling  of  the  one  supreme  master. 

[  18&] 


THE  ELIZABETHAN  CURRENT 

Also,  whereas  the  criticism  of  Lamb  was  a  strictly  indigenous 
product,  that  of  his  two  friends  was  strongly  tinctured  with  the 
thought  of  Germany,  where  the  humanistic  interpretation  of 
Shakespeare  had  before  1812  advanced  much  farther  than  among 
his  own  countrymen.  Coleridge,  during  his  brief  trip  to  Germany, 
had  soaked  himself  in  the  thought  of  Lessing  and  Kant.  While 
delivering  his  second  course  of  lectures  in  181 2  he  read  the  writings 
of  A.  W.  Schlegel,  the  critical  leader  of  the  German  Romantic 
School;  and  his  own  discourses  on  Shakespeare  are  filled  with 
parallelisms  to  that  writer.  Hazlitt  in  181 6,  before  producing  most 
of  his  own  Elizabethan  criticism,  had  reviewed  Schlegel  on  the 
Drama  in  The  Edinburgh  Review  at  great  length  and  with  marked 
approval. 

Meanwhile  the  lectures  of  those  rich  in  brains  were  being  aided 
by  the  printing  press  of  one  rich  in  cash.  From  1813  to  1822  Sir 
Samuel  Egerton  Brydges,  a  would-be  poet  and  a  nobleman,  but  in 
spite  of  these  handicaps  a  valuable  aid  to  literature,  operated  his 
private  printing  establishment,  the  Lee  Priory  Press.  It  produced 
chiefly  reprints  of  rare  old  books,  among  them  poems  of  William 
Browne  and  Greene's  "Groatsworth  of  Wit,"  and  so  rendered  gen- 
uine service  to  old  literature,  especially  the  Elizabethan. 
*  Hazlitt  and  Coleridge,  obviously,  were  much  influenced  by  Lamb, 
for  so  many  years  the  friend  of  both;  and  Coleridge  reciprocated  by 
filling  the  Elizabethan  books  of  "Elia"  with  scribbled  annotations. 
"Many  are  those  precious  MSS.  of  his  .  .  .  legible  in  my  Daniel; 
in  old  Burton;  in  Sir  Thomas  Browne;  and  those  abstruser  cogita- 
tions of  the  Greville,"  says  Lamb  in  "The  Two  Races  of  Men." 
Hazlitt  was  also  reacted  on  by  one  who  about  the  time  of  his  emer- 
gence as  a  literary  critic  became  the  friend  of  himself  and  Lamb, 
Bryan  Waller  Procter.  This  genial  poet  had,  as  a  child,  breathed 
in  the  love  of  Shakespeare  from  his  nurse,  a  woman  fallen  from 
better  days.  Procter  tells  us  that  when  Hazlitt  "was  about  to  write 
his  Lectures  on  the  Age  of  Elizabeth,  he  knew  little  or  nothing  of 
the  dramatists  of  that  time,  with  the  exception  of  Shakespeare.  He 
spoke  to  Charles  Lamb,  and  to  myself,  who  were  supposed  by  many 
to  be  well  acquainted  with  those  ancient  writers.  I  lent  him  about 

[  189  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

a  dozen  volumes,  comprehending  the  finest  of  the  old  plays;  and 
he  then  went  down  to  Winterslow  Hut,  in  Wiltshire,  and  after  a  stay 
of  six  weeks  came  back  to  London,  fully  impregnated  with  the  sub- 
ject, with  his  thoughts  fully  made  up  upon  it,  and  with  all  his  lec- 
tures written." 
—  In  1 819  with  his  "Dramatic  Scenes"  Procter  led  the  way  in  the 
new  wave  of  Elizabethan  imitations.  Two  years  later  he  published 
his  drama  of  "Mirandola,"  which  had  been  acted  successfully  at 
Covent  Garden  Theater,  with  such  able  Shakespearean  actors  as 
Kemble  and  Macready  in  the  leading  roles.  "Mirandola"  is  in  al- 
most slavish  imitation  of  plays  like  the  "Love's  Sacrifice"  of  John 
Ford,  even  using  "abused"  in  its  long- forgotten  Elizabethan  mean- 
ing of  "deceived."  The  Prologue,  by  one  of  the  author's  friends, 
after  praising  the  Elizabethans,  tells  the  audience: 

Of  late  some  poets  of  true  mind  have  writ 
Lines  that  have  relished  of  the  ancient  wit; 
To-night,  another, — not  unknown — yet  one 
Who  feels  that  much  is  to  be  lost — and  won. 
Comes  with  a  few  plain  words,  honestly  told. 
Like  those  his  mightier  masters  spoke  of  old. 

Remembering  how  much  the  ancient  dramatists  drew  from  Italy, 
we  need  not  be  astonished  if  the  Elizabethan  and  Italian  currents 
often  became  one.  In  182 1  it  is  not  at  all  surprising  to  find  a  play 
located  in  Italy,  and  one  of  the  characters  giving  a  eulogistic  list 
of  Italian  authors: 

These  lines  were  strung 
By  frenzied  Tasso  whom  a  princess  scorned, 
And  these  flew  forth  from  Ariosto's  quill. 
And  these  sad  Petrarch,  who  lamented  long 
Laura,  his  love,  once  writ;  and  some  there  were 
Inscribed  by  great  Boccaccio's  golden  pen. 

If  Procter's  first  play  had  appeared  ten  years  earlier  it  would  prob- 
ably have  been  very  different.  Having  no  great  literary  merit  to 
preserve  it,  it  may  gain  an  inglorious  immortality  as  a  straw  showing 
which  way  the  wind  blew. 

[  190  ] 


THE  ELIZABETHAN  CURRENT 

Jeffrey  in  reviewing  Bryan  Waller  Procter's  "Sicilian  Story"  said 
of  his  work  in  general:  "Mr.  Cornwall's  style  is  chiefly  moulded, 
and  his  versification  modulated,  on  the  pattern  of  Shakespeare, 
Marlow,  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  and  Massinger.  He  has  also  copied 
something  from  Milton  and  Ben  Jonson,  and  the  amorous  cavaliers 
of  the  Usurpation — and  then,  passing  disdainfully  over  all  the  inter- 
mediate writers,  has  flung  himself  fairly  into  the  arms  of  Lord 
Byron,  Coleridge,  Wordsworth,  and  Leigh  Hunt.  .  .  .  But  really 
the  materials  harmonize  very  tolerably.  .  .  .  The  natural  bent  of 
his  genius  is  more  like  that  of  Leigh  Hunt  than  any  other  author. 
.  .  .  But  he  has  better  taste  and  better  judgment."  This  pretty 
accurate  verdict  explains  why  that  popular  and  kind-hearted  poet 
will  be  found  scattered  through  our  book  like  the  limbs  of  Medea's 
children.  It  also  explains  why  his  most  prominent  role  may  well  be 
played  in  the  present  chapter.  It  was  as  a  reviver  of  the  Elizabethan 
models  that  he  was  first  welcomed  by  the  public.  The  Literary 
Gazette  said  that  his  "Dramatic  Scenes"  "give  us  the  impression  of 
a  mind  eminently  rich  in  its  knowledge  of  the  finest  era  of  the  Eng- 
Hsh  mind."  Leigh  Hunt's  Examiner  found  the  author  "evidently 
well  acquainted  with  our  old  dramatists;  but  he  writes  after  them 
like  a  true  disciple,  not  at  all  like  a  servile  imitator."  In  the  words 
of  Blackwood's,  "the  shade  of  Massinger  himself  might  with 
pleasure  hail  his  appearance  in  the  world  of  imagination."  Six  of  his 
brief  "Dramatic  Scenes"  appeared  in  1819,  and  the  rest  were 
written  soon  after,  though  not  published  for  years.  Like  the  dia- 
logues of  Landor  or  the  work  of  his  French  contemporary  Vitet, 
they  give  a  single  dramatic  hour,  not  a  character  development;  and 
in  spite  of  lax  run-on  lines  they  still  read  better  than  the  author's 
other  work.  In  "Ludovico  Sforza,"  which  is  prefaced  by  a  quotation 
from  Webster,  one  can  hear  the  echo  of  that  somber  genius  through 
Isabella's  words  over  her  dead  victim: 

I  could  grieve,  almost, 
To  see  his  ghastly  stare.  His  eye  is  vague ; 
Is  motionless.  How  like  those  shapes  he  grows, 
That  sit  in  stony  whiteness  over  tombs, 
Memorials  of  their  cold  inhabitants. 

[  191  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

Juan  like  Othello  kills  an  innocent  wife  in  erring  jealousy  and  then 
stabs  himself.  The  quotations  prefixed  to  the  different  "scenes" 
represent,  besides  Webster,  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  Massinger, 
Shakespeare,  Ben  Jonson,  and  Middleton.  It  was  probably  from 
Ford  liat  "The  Broken  Heart"  borrowed  its  title.  In  comparing 
these  rather  able  fragments  with  the  far  "too  lovey"  narrative 
poems,  one  cannot  help  wishing  that  Procter  had  lived  up  to  his 
own  words: 

He  who  feeds 
Upon  Shakespearean  pastures  never  needs 
The  humbler  food  which  springs  from  plains  below. 

Shelley's  "Cenci,"  though  original  and  Italian  in  its  underlying 
conception,  is  full  of  Shakespearean  mannerisms  and  echoes,  which 
he  may  or  may  not  have  caught  in  the  "Cockney"  days  from 
Procter,  Lamb,  and  Hazlitt.  Act  IV  especially  is  redolent  of  "Mac- 
beth." In  the  much  inferior  dramatic  fragment  "Charles  the  First," 
the  ghastly  joking  of  Archy,  the  Court  Fool,  is  a  connecting  link 
between  Webster  and  Shelley's  admirer  Beddoes.  Yet  this  tendency 
was  only  a  passing  ripple  across  the  mind  that  conceived  the 
"Prometheus."  Shelley's  reading  during  this  period,  as  shown  by 
the  notes  of  his  widow,  was  mainly  Greek,  and  included  hardly  any 
of  Shakespeare's  fellow  tragedians. 

Keats's  friend,  Charles  Armitage  Brown,  brought  out  a  book, 
though  not  a  very  valuable  one,  entitled:  "Shakespeare's  Auto- 
biographical Poems.  Being  his  Sonnets  Clearly  developed;  with  his 
Characters  drawn  chiefly  from  his  Works."  The  author  of  "Endym- 
ion"  himself  was  temporarily  affected,  and  is  thought  to  have  bor- 
rowed in  his  long  poem  from  Lyly's  "Endimion,"  Drayton's  "Man 
in  the  Moon,"  and  poems  of  Fletcher,  William  Browne,  and  Ben 
Jonson.  In  1824  Charles  Wells,  also  the  friend  of  Keats,  and  very 
probably  the  Elizabethan  disciple  of  Lamb,  Procter,  and  Hazlitt, 
published  under  an  assumed  name  "Joseph  and  his  Brethren."  It 
drew  its  plot  from  the  Bible,  one  of  the  few  historical  fields  neg- 
lected by  the  great  Elizabethan  dramatists;  but  diction,  blank  verse, 
and  character  conception  are  obviously  reminiscent  of  Peele,  Mar- 

[  192  ] 


THE  ELIZABETHAN  CURRENT 

lowe,  and  Shakespeare.  There  are  splendid  ward  pictures  in  it,  yet 
as  a  whole  it  is  rather  heavy  reading;  and  the  utter  neglect  shown 
by  the  public,  though  unjust,  was  not  unnatural.  The  rich  Oriental 
atmosphere  reminds  one  of  Gautier's  "Romance  of  a  Mummy,"  as 
well  as  of  descriptions  in  Marlowe's  "Tamburlaine." 

Then  came  the  honoured  elders  of  the  land, 
Whose  sombre  habits  answered  to  their  age, 
Wove  of  the  ancient  woof  which  sibyls  love; — 
Their  faces  as  old  chronicles  were  mapped 
And  furrowed  with  an  age  of  mystic  thought; 
Their  snowy  hair  that  mingled  with  their  beards 
Flowed  o'er  their  shadowy  forms  in  many  a  fold. 
Covering  their  garments  like  a  silver  cloud 
As  moonlight  o'er  some  darksome  sepulchre.  .  .  . 
Each  one  was  followed  by  his  sacred  charge. 
In  silver  cradles  worked  with  lotus  flowers. 
Wherein  were  shrined  with  reverential  awe 
Emblems  of  Egypt  since  her  antique  days 
(As  on  her  brazen  pillars  it  is  writ) 
Coeval  with  creation's  misty  age. 

Meanwhile  a  more  somber  and  powerful  genius  was  at  work,  the 
poet  Beddoes.  He  had  several  literary  affiliations,  but  they  were  all 
of  the  most  tenuous  kind.  His  mother  was  the  sister  of  Maria  Edge- 
worth.  His  father,  a  famous  physician,  had  been  somewhat  ac- 
quainted with  the  poets  of  the  Bristol  Eddy.  He  himself  in  his  best  . 
creative  period  worshiped  Shglj^ey  from  afar,  was  one  of  the  first'^'^Sf^^ 
to  discover  the  greatness  of  that  uncomprehended  giant,  and  to 
forward  the  posthumous  publication  of  his  works.  About  1823  he 
at  least  met  Procter  and  corresponded  with  him  later.  Yet  he  came 
closely  in  touch  with  no  literary  man  or  literary  group.  Lonely  as  an 
asteroid  in  Chaos,  he  followed  his  eccentric  orbit,  tie  fragment  of 
a  greater  poetical  world  that  might  have  been.  As  his  love  and  wide 
knowledge  of  the  Elizabethan  dramatists  was  formed  in  schoolboy 
days  independently  of  all  outside  influences,  it  is  impossible  to  say 
how  far  the  laudatory  reviews  which  his  fellow  Elizabethan  dis- 
ciples, Procter  and  Darley,  gave  to  his  early  "Brides'  Tragedy," 

[  193  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

encouraged  him  in  the  gloomy  Websterian  character  of  his  later 
masterpiece.  In  182 1  he  published  the  worthless  'Improvisatore" 
and  immature  but  highly  poetical  "Brides'  Tragedy."  Then  he 
expatriated  himself,  body  and  soul,  became  an  eccentric  German 
physician,  and  dying  in  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  left  his 
one  great  work,  "Death's  Jestbook,"  to  be  published  by  his  friends. 
It  had  been  finished  by  1829,  and,  though  later  revised,  may  justly 
be  grouped  with  the  plays  before  1830.  Perhaps  the  fact  that  he 
wrote  it  almost  wholly  in  Germany  influenced  Beddoes  in  his  choice 
of  a  German  medieval  theme. 

Beddoes  realized  perfectly  both  the  opportunities  and  limitations 
in  this  field  of  Elizabethan  imitation.  "The  man  who  is  to  awaken 
the  drama,"  he  said,  "must  be  a  bold  trampling  fellow — no  creeper 
into  worm-holes — no  reviver  even,  however  good.  These  reanima- 
tions  are  vampire  cold.  Such  ghosts  as  Marlowe,  Webster,  etc.,  are 
better  dramatists,  better  poets,  I  daresay,  than  any  contemporary 
of  ours,  but  they  are  ghosts — the  worm  is  in  their  pages — and  we 
want  to  see  something  that  our  great  grandsires  did  not  know.  .  .  . 
Just  now  the  drama  is  a  haunted  ruin."  But  growing  melancholy  or 
misdirected  powers  seem  to  have  raised  an  invisible  barrier  between 
the  poet  and  the  goal  which  he  clearly  visioned;  he  became  "a 
reviver"  "however  good."  None  the  less  in  that  limited  field  he 
reigns  supreme,  a  master  of  sepulchral  atmosphere  and  sonorous 
blank  verse.  Unity  of  action  he  has  none,  but  the  unity  of  mood  is 
perfect.  And  in  that  mood  there  is  an  element  that  is  not  primarily 
Elizabethan  but  belongs  rather  to  the  medieval  or  Oriental  ascetic. 
The  bold  dramatists  of  good  Queen  Bess  generally  considered  death 
an  evil,  to  be  faced  but  not  sought.  Beddoes  considers  it  the  one 
blessing  in  an  evil  world,  the  calm  Nirvanah  of  the  sepulcher.  At 
eighteen  he  made  a  desolate  mother  cry: 

Men  call  him  Death,  but  Comfort  is  his  name; 

and  the  same  mournfully  healing  thesis  is  that  of  "Death's  Jest- 
book."  To  die  is 

The  right  of  the  deserving  good  old  man 
To  rest,  his  cheerful  labor  being  done. 

[  194  ] 


THE  ELIZABETHAN  CURRENT 

The  young  girl  Sibyl  loves  flowers 

because  these  brief  visitors  to  us 
Rise  yearly  from  the  neighborhood  of  the  dead, 
To  show  us  how  far  fairer  and  more  lovely 
Their  world  is. 

The  ghosts 

are  afraid 
They  would  envy  our  delight, 
In  our  graves  by  glow-worm  night. 

The  spectre  Wolfram  says  that 

The  dead  are  ever  good  and  innocent, 
And  love  the  living; 

and  he  reproaches  Duke  Melveric  for  daring 

to  call  up  into  life, 
And  the  imholy  world's  forbidden  sunlight, 
Out  of  his  grave  him  who  reposed  softly. 

Such  an  attitude  might  easily  be  suggested  by  Webster  but  is  more 
hungry  for  death  than  he;  longs  for  it  like  the  German  Romantiker 
Novalis,  in  whose  country,  perhaps  over  whose  pages,  it  was 
written.* 
I  Only  one  degree  less  isolated  than  Beddoes  was  George  Darley, 
^  a  young  Irishman,  desocialized  in  the  midst  of  thousands  by  an 
unfortunate  stammer  and  a  poetic  temperament,  "a  hermit  in  the 
center  of  London."  Yet  as  a  contributor  to  The  London  Magazine, 
and  the  friend  of  Lamb,  he  had  become  socially  related  to  the 

♦Another  close  parallel  to  Beddoes's  mood  is  found  in  his  great  Italian  contem- 
porary Leopardi,  who,  while  "Death's  Jestbook"  was  under  revision,  wrote  in  1834: 
"Now,  I  envy  neither  fools,  nor  the  wise,  the  great,  the  small,  the  weak,  the  powerful. 
I  envy  the  dead,  and  with  them  alone  would  I  exchange  my  lot.  Every  pleasurable 
fancy,  every  thought  of  the  future  that  comes  to  me  in  my  solitude,  and  with  which 
I  pass  away  the  time,  is  allied  with  the  thought  of  death  from  which  it  is  inseparable. 
And  in  this  longing,  neither  the  remembrance  of  my  childish  dreams,  nor  the  thought 
of  having  lived  in  vain,  disturbs  me  any  more  as  formerly.  When  death  comes  to  me, 
I  shall  die  as  peacefully  and  contentedly  as  if  it  were  the  only  thing  for  which  I  had 
ever  wished  in  the  world.  This  is  the  sole  prospect  that  reconciles  me  to  Destiny." 
"Dialogue  Between  Tristano  and  a  Friend"  (Edwardes's  translation). 

[  19s  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

Elizabethan  disciples  long  before  he  wrote  his  best  work  "Sylvia, 
or  the  May  Queen"  (1827).  This  is  a  rambling  poetical  drama,  full 
of  romantic  impossibilities;  yet  well  furnished  with  poetry  too.  It 
has  a  general  spirit  akin  partly  to  Shakespeare's  "Midsummer 
Night's  Dream"  and  partly  to  "The  Faithful  Shepherdess"  of 
Fletcher,  whose  editor  Darley  later  became.  In  the  same  year 
Thomas  Hood,  also  one  of  the  London  Magazine  writers,  published 
his  "Plea  of  the  Midsummer  Fairies,"  a  fanciful  narrative  poem, 
written,  as  he  tells  us  in  the  dedicatory  letter  to  Lamb,  "to  cele- 
brate, by  an  allegory,  that  immortality  which  Shakespeare  has  con- 
ferred on  the  Fairy  mythology  by  his  'Midsummer  Night's  Dream.'  " 
We  shall  mention  elsewhere  Thomas  Wade,  who  dramatized  the 
story  of  patient  Griselda  from  the  Italian  as  Dekker  and  his  col- 
laborators had  done  before.  His  manuscript  play  of  "Henry  II," 
which  was  described  by  Mr.  Buxton  Forman  as  "Elizabethan  but 
not  imitative,"  and  his  "Jew  of  Arragon"  come  about  1830  and  lie 
on  the  utmost  limits  of  our  field.  The  latter  drama  proved  too  pro- 
Hebraic  for  the  patience  of  its  audience,  and  may  be  considered  as 
a  reaction  against  Shylock  and  Marlowe's  "Jew  of  Malta." 
.  While  these  Elizabethan  imitations  were  being  written,  several  of 
the  Elizabethans  themselves  were  appearing  for  the  first  time  in 
scholarly  editions,  the  work  of  the  Rev.  Alexander  Dyce.  Born  in 
the  year  of  the  "Lyrical  Ballads,"  he  came  to  London  about  1827, 
and  within  six  years  thereafter  had  edited  the  dramas  of  Peele, 
Greene,  Webster,  and  Shirley,  followed  later  by  others  of  that  great 
brotherhood.  The  debt  of  Elizabethan  scholarship  to  Dyce  and  to 
the  later  labors  of  Cowden  Clarke  needs  no  comment. 

It  will  be  seen  that  there  was  a  fairly  continuous  chain  of  social 
relationships  between  the  different  Elizabethan  imitators  and 
scholars.  To  some  extent,  though  exactly  how  far  we  cannot  tell, 
the  torch  was  passed  from  hand  to  hand.  The  Elizabethan  enthu- 
siasm was  no  great  popular  wave  as  the  medieval  and  Oriental  had 
been,  but  the  cult  of  a  few  comparatively  obscure  and  uninfluential 
men,  who  encouraged  each  other  and  found  little  encouragement 
elsewhere.  "What  is  the  amount  even  of  Shakespeare's  fame?" 
demanded  Hazlitt  in  181 7.  "That,  in  that  very  country  which  boasts 

[  196  ] 


THE  ELIZABETHAN  CURRENT 

his  genius  and  his  birth,  perhaps  not  one  person  in  ten  has  ever 
heard  of  his  name,  or  read  a  syllable  of  his  writings ! "  With  due 
allowance  for  Hazlitt's  love  of  pugnacious  hyperbole,  one  must  feel 
the  weight  of  such  a  statement.  By  1822  Byron  scents  a  change  in 
the  air,  and  alludes  cynically  to 

Shakespeare,  who  just  now  is  much  in  fashion; 

but  at  that  very  time  Hazlitt  was  recording  again  the  neglect  of  the 
other  Elizabethans:  "Who  reads  Deckar  now?  Or  if  by  chance  any 
one  awakes  the  strings  of  that  ancient  lyre,  and  starts  with  delight 
as  they  yield  wild,  broken  music,  is  he  not  accused  of  envy  to  the 
living  Muse?  What  would  a  linen  draper  from  Holborn  think,  if 
I  were  to  ask  him  after  the  clerk  of  St.  Andrews,  the  immortal,  the 
forgotten  Webster?  His  name  and  his  works  are  no  more  heard  of." 
Two  years  later,  while  Beddoes  was  in  the  midst  of  his  grim  master- 
piece, and  Procter's  work  was  ending  and  Barley's  beginning, 
Hazlitt  renews  the  charge:  "Even  well-informed  people  among  us 
hardly  know  the  difference  between  Otway  and  Shakespeare;  and 
if  a  person  has  a  fancy  for  any  of  our  elder  classics,  he  may  have 
it  to  himself  for  what  the  public  cares." 

Another  significant  fact  is  that  the  men  connected  with  the 
Elizabethan  current  led  a  life  analogous  to  that  of  the  Elizabethans 
themselves.  Lamb,  Hazlitt,  Cowden  Clarke,  Dyce,  Hood,  Darley, 
Wells,  like  Webster,  Decker,  Fletcher,  and  Massinger,  were  by 
birth  or  adoption  Londoners.  Like  their  great  predecessors,  they 
lived  in  a  respectable  but  unconventional  literary  bohemia.  They 
stood  for  the  most  poetical  side  of  town  life,  as  Wordsworth,  Burns, 
and  Scott  did  for  that  of  the  frontiers.  The  poetry  of  unnumbered 
human  countenances,  of  constant  incidents  pathetic  or  laughable, 
was  their  daily  landscape.  They  might  have  answered  to  Words- 
worth (and  Lamb  did  practically  answer  so) : 

To  me  the  meanest  face  that  mourns  can  give 
Thoughts  that  do  often  lie  too  deep  for  tears. 

Procter's  favorite  method  was  to  compose  when  alone  in  a  crowd; 
and,  as  we  learn  from  Miss  Martineau,  "he  declared  that  he  did 

[  197  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

his  best  when  walking  London  streets."  Lamb  has  left  it  on  record 
that  he  "often  shed  tears  in  the  motley  Strand  from  fulness  of  joy 
at  so  much  life."  Even  Coleridge  during  most  of  his  Shakespearean 
period  was  a  resident  near  London.  These  writers  could  sympathize 
beyond  other  men  with  the  great  bygone  drama  because  they  had 
learned  to  sympathize  first  with  the  life  that  had  produced  it.  If 
they  were  weak  in  that  very  humanism  and  character  analysis  in 
which  Decker  and  Middleton  excelled,  that  was  partly  the  fault  of 
their  age.  Their  sympathy  turned  naturally  toward  the  great  bygone 
poets  who  had  been  like  themselves  city  men  and  of  their  own 
manner  of  life,  as  Byron  and  Rogers  turned  to  the  bygone  poets  of 
the  court  and  salon^  as  Wordsworth  turned  to  his  rural  forerunners, 
Thomson  and  Dyer.  One  of  the  chief  city  influences  which  was  open 
to  them  daily,  and  to  Wordsworth  so  rarely,  was  the  theater  itself. 
There  were  giants  on  the  stage  in  those  days.  Young  Cowden  Clarke 
tells  us  of  his  eager  walks  to  see  Mrs.  Siddons  as  Lady  Macbeth  and 
Queen  Constance,  Miss  O'Neil  as  Juliet,  John  Kemble  as  Coriolanus 
or  Brutus,  Booth  as  lago,  and  Edmund  Kean  as  Othello,  Lear, 
Hamlet,  Richard  III,  Shylock,  and  Massinger's  Sir  Giles  Over- 
reach. ''Forty  or  fifty  years  ago,"  wrote  Leigh  Hunt  in  1850,  "people 
of  all  times  of  hfe  were  much  greater  playgoers  than  they  are  now"; 
and  thus  the  theater  gave  new  life  to  that  which  had  earlier  made 
it  live. 

If  the  plays  of  the  Elizabethan  imitators  are  bracketed  with  those 
of  Byron  and  Shelley,  with  "Otho  the  Great"  by  Keats  and  Brown, 
and  Keats's  fragment  of  "King  Stephen,"  one  realizes  what  an  out- 
burst of  closet  drama  there  was  in  the  decade  following  181 6.  Never 
before  in  the  history  of  English  literature  had  so  much  of  literary 
merit  taken  that  form  in  so  short  a  time.  For  good  or  ill,  that  was 
one  of  the  bequests  which  the  later  romantic  generation  left  to 
posterity. 

II 

If  the  Elizabethan  tradition  ran  tangent  to  the  "Cockney"  group, 
the  authors  of  The  London  Magazine  formed  an  overlapping  circle 
to  it  with  a  common  chord.  Hazlitt,  Lamb,  Reynolds,  and  Procter 

[  198  ] 


THE  ELIZABETHAN  CURRENT 

were  connected  with  both  of  these  closely  related  eddies,  the  first 
of  which  disintegrated  almost  simultaneously  with  the  formation 
of  the  latter.  The  career  of  The  London  Magazine  was  painfully 
brief,  from  1820  to  1829,  and  during  the  last  half  of  that  decade 
it  was  barren  enough;  but  for  the  first  few  years  of  its  being  it  was 
probably  richer  in  good  authors  and  enduring  literature  than  any 
other  English  magazine  has  been  before  or  since.  It  was  also 
mainly  the  product  of  a  literary  group  of  London  acquaintances, 
even  if  these  writers  did  not  form  quite  so  definite  an  eddy  as  the 
'^Cockneys." 

The  first  editor,  the  man  who  dedicated  its  cornerstone  to  litera- 
ture, was  John  Scott,  a  brilliant  journalist  of  Scotch  birth  and 
London  training.  His  career  was  unfortunately  brief.  He  had  been 
in  various  ways  connected  with  the  circle  of  Leigh  Hunt,  and  when 
editor  of  a  former  paper.  The  Champion,  had  sometimes  played 
the  part  of  ally  to  The  Examiner.  Consequently  it  is  easy  to  under- 
stand why  he  resented  the  Z  articles  in  Blackwood's  against  the 
"Cockneys,"  how  he  was  drawn  into  a  quarrel  with  Lockhart,  and 
finally  into  a  duel  with  Lockhart's  friend  Christie.  Scott  was  mor- 
tally wounded  February  16,  182 1,  and  died  eleven  days  later. 
There  is  a  touch  of  dramatic  irony  in  the  fact  that,  though  he  died 
in  the  attempt  to  avenge  Hunt  and  Keats,  the  latter  apparently  did 
not  like  him.  Scott  is  described  by  his  contemporary  Talfourd  as 
"a  critic  of  remarkable  candour,  eloquence,  and  discrimination,  un- 
fettered by  the  dogmas  of  contending  schools  of  poetry  and  art; 
apt  to  discern  the  good  and  beautiful  in  all  .  .  .  more  fit  to  preside 
over  a  little  commonwealth  of  authors  than  to  hold  a  despotic  rule 
over  subject  contributors."  The  impetus  which  he  gave  the  new 
magazine  continued  for  some  time  after  his  death  but  was  gradually 
lost  under  his  less  competent  successors. 

Before  his  death  he  had  already  gathered  around  him  a  knot  of 
exceedingly  able  writers.  One  of  these  was  Henry  Cary,  the  trans- 
lator of  Dante,  whose  son  and  biographer  has  given  us  a  vivid 
picture  of  the  social  life  that  underlay  the  literary  product  of  the 
magazine:  "My  father's  connection  with  the  London  Magazine 
made  him  acquainted  with  several  of  our  ablest  popular  writers; 

[  199  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

such  as  Charles  Lamb,  Hazlitt,  De  Quincey,  Procter,  Allan  Cunning- 
ham, Carlyle,  Hood,  Darley,  and  John  Clare,  the  poet.  With  two 
of  these.  Lamb  and  Darley,  he  contracted  a  cordial  intimacy  and 
friendship,  which  was  terminated  only  by  death.  Most  of  these  he 
met  at  the  table  of  Mr.  Taylor,  the  publisher,  and  when  once  brought 
together,  they  not  unfrequently  met  at  the  house  of  one  or  [sic] 
other  of  the  number.  At  the  first  of  these  Magazine  dinners,  as  they 
were  called,  held  at  Mr.  Cary's  own  house,  I  remember  that,  among 
others.  Lamb,  Kelley,  the  farce-writer,  and  Clare  were  present. 
The  conversation,  which  never  flagged,  consisted  of  a  strange 
mixture  of  learning,  wit,  and  puns,  bad  and  good.  ...  To  a 
looker-on,  as  I  was,  the  most  interesting  of  the  party  was  the  peasant 
Clare.  He  was  dressed  in  a  labourer's  holiday  suit.  The  punsters 
evidently  alarmed  him;  but  he  listened  with  the  deepest  attention 
to  his  host."* 

With  the  exception  of  Kelley,  all  of  the  writers  mentioned  above 
contributed  to  the  London.  De  Quincey  had  transferred  his  home 
from  the  Lakes  to  the  metropolis  just  as  the  magazine  was  getting 
under  way,  and  published  in  its  pages  in  1821  his  "Confessions  of 
an  English  Opium  Eater."  Allan  Cunningham  was  a  minor  Scotch 
author,  who  in  his  native  country  had  seen  Burns  lying  dead,  sought 
out  the  friendship  of  the  Ettrick  Shepherd,  and  then  come  to  Lon- 
don in  early  manhood  to  push  his  fortunes.  His  manliness  was 
greater  than  his  genius,  and  most  of  his  poetry  now  is  forgotten; 
but  his  acquaintances  generally  had  a  warm  spot  in  their  hearts  for 
"honest  Allan."  Thomas  Hood  was  from  the  beginning  one  of  the 
leading  spirits  of  the  magazine,  and  after  Scott's  death  assumed 
part  of  tiie  editorial  responsibility.  Hood  apparently  became  ac- 
quainted with  Reynolds  through  their  joint  work  on  the  London. 
They  were  for  some  time  warm  friends  and  in  1825  became 
brothers-in-law;  but  at  about  the  time  when  the  magazine  first 
began  to  decline  they  quarreled  and  drifted  apart,  for  reasons  not 
clearly  known.  John  Clare  was  a  peasant  poet  of  Northamptonshire, 
poor  as  Burns  in  financial  resources  and  far  poorer  in  physical 

*A  full  account  of  these  dinners,  too  long  for  quotation,  is  given  in  Hood's 
"Literary  Reminiscences,"  No.  IV. 

[    200    ] 


THE  ELIZABETHAN  CURRENT 

strength,  that  invaluable  asset  for  the  penniless.  Taylor,  of  the  firm 
of  Taylor  and  Hessey,  the  publishers  of  The  London  Magazine, 
became  his  friend  and  patron,  and  published  several  volumes  of 
his  poems.  Clare  lived  in  the  country,  but  made  a  number  of  short 
trips  to  London,  where  he  met  most  of  the  magazine  group  and 
became  the  friend  of  Cunningham. 

Another  contributor  of  verse  to  the  London,  like  Clare  in  his 
poetic  mood,  his  lovableness,  and  his  irresponsibility,  though  dif- 
ferent enough  in  birth  and  training,  was  Hartley  Coleridge.  After 
his  unfortunate  experiences  as  an  undergraduate  at  Oxford,  his 
brother  tells  us  that  he  ''remained  in  London  and  the  neighborhood 
about  two  years  .  .  .  writing,  from  time  to  time,  small  pieces  for 
the  London  Magazine"  It  does  not  appear,  however,  that  he  saw 
much  of  the  other  contributors,  unless  it  was  Lamb,  his  father's 
friend.  A  writer  who  left  no  enduring  work  but  who  was  a  promi- 
nent figure  among  the  set,  was  Thomas  Griffiths  Wainwright,  de- 
scribed by  Talfourd  as  a  young  man,  "with  a  sort  of  undress  military 
air,  and  the  conversation  of  a  smart,  lively,  clever,  heartless,  volup- 
tuous coxcomb."  He  is  interesting  to  us  now  only  because  Lamb 
overrated  him.  Another  contributor,  who  was  the  friendly  corre- 
spondent of  Lamb,  but  otherwise  not  connected  socially  with  the 
writers  for  the  London,  was  Bernard  Barton,  the  Quaker  poet.  His 
friendship  for  Lamb  was  due  to  the  magazine.  In  its  pages  he  had 
read  the  "Essays  of  Elia";  and,  thinking  the  treatment  of  the 
Quakers  therein  hardly  fair,  he  had  written  to  the  author  in  gentle 
remonstrance.  Among  other  contributors  were  Thomas  Noon  Tal- 
fourd and  Horace  Smith.  Some  of  these  men  wrote  in  the  London 
under  their  own  names,  others  anonymously,  others  under  pseudo- 
nyms. J.  H.  Reynolds  signed  himself  "Edward  Herbert";  Wain- 
wright was  "Janus  Weathercock";  Charles  Dilke  used  the  pen 
name  of  "Thurma";  and  Lamb  made  the  nom  de  plume  of  "Elia" 
immortal. 

That  The  London  Magazine  was  not  merely  a  vehicle  for  publi- 
cation but  also  an  inspirational  force,  a  creator  of  new  authors,  is 
shown  in  the  case  of  De  Quincey.  He  had  reached  the  age  of  thirty- 
six  without  publishing,  and  apparently  without  writing  anything 

[    201    ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

of  merit.  Had  the  editorial  staff  not  suggested  to  him  his  "Confes- 
sions," he  might  never  have  written  them,  and  might  never  have 
embarked  on  his  long  career  as  a  periodical  writer.  His  biographer 
Japp  tells  us  that  at  the  periodical  after-dinner  meetings  which 
Taylor  and  Hessey  held  with  their  contributors  "as  was  natural, 
De  Quincey's  experiences  due  to  opium  were  often  spoken  of.  This 
at  length  led  to  his  being  asked  to  write  an  account  of  these.  The 
result  was  the  famous  ^Confessions,'  which  produced  an  immediate 
effect,  and  placed  De  Quincey  in  the  front  rank  of  literary  men 
then  living."  Apparently  these  "Confessions"  owed  nothing  to  the 
literary  environment  of  the  Lake  district,  although  many  of  the 
scenes  which  they  describe  had  happened  there;  the  entire  work 
was  written  in  the  author's  city  lodgings.  "Meantime  I  am  again 
in  London,"  it  tells  us,  "and  again  I  pace  the  terraces  of  Oxford 
Street  by  night."  It  was  the  London  also  which  first  launched  Tom 
Hood  on  the  sea  of  literature.  He  was  working  for  a  living  as  an 
engraver  and  furtively  dreaming  of  poetry  on  which  he  did  not 
dare  to  spend  his  time  when,  after  the  death  of  John  Scott,  he  was 
offered  the  position  of  sub-editor  by  the  new  proprietors  of  the 
magazine,  who  were  his  friends.  Hood  himself  described  this  event 
as  one  "which  was  to  introduce  me  to  Authorship  in  earnest,  and 
make  the  Muse,  with  whom  I  had  only  flirted,  my  companion  for 
life.  ...  To  judge  by  my  zeal  and  delight  in  my  new  pursuit,  the 
bowl  had  at  last  found  its  natural  bias." 

If  the  magazine  did  not  quite  so  definitely  create  Lamb  as  an 
author,  it  at  least  helped  him  mature  his  powers  as  he  had  never 
done  before.  For  a  quarter  of  a  century  he  had  been  experimenting 
with  poetry,  drama,  and  essay-writing  without  making  a  decided 
success  in  any  of  these  fields.  It  is  by  his  "Essays  of  Elia,"  his  part 
in  the  London,  that  he  holds  his  enduring  niche  in  our  literature. 
Hazlitt  introduced  him  to  John  Scott,  who  invited  him  to  contribute 
occasional  essays,  and  thereby  made  him  immortal. 

As  for  John  Clare,  his  debt  to  the  London  group  as  a  group  was 
less;  but  it  is  a  question  whether  he  would  ever  have  emerged  into 
poethood  without  the  help  of  the  publisher  Taylor.  In  1819,  when 
Clare  as  yet  had  published  nothing,  a  common  friend  sent  a  bundle 

[  202  ] 


THE  ELIZABETHAN  CURRENT 

of  his  MSS.  poems  to  the  London  bookmaker.  Taylor  at  the  time 
was  rolling  over  plans  for  the  yet  unborn  London  Magazine,  and  felt 
that  the  discovery  of  an  English  Burns  or  another  Bloomfield  among 
the  poor  would  have  a  sensational  character  favorable  for  the  pro- 
motion of  new  enterprises.  His  motives  were  far  from  being  wholly 
praiseworthy;  but  they  led  to  the  launching  of  Clare  as  a  poet. 
Taylor  published  his  first  volume  of  verse  in  1820,  and  drummed 
up  sales  and  reviews  for  the  new  "prodigy"  by  every  means  in  his 
power.  The  first  number  of  The  London  Magazine  contained  a  long 
puff  for  the  new  protege,  "Some  account  of  John  Clare,  an  agri- 
cultural laborer  and  poet."  Influence  was  used  on  The  Quarterly, 
which  published  a  highly  favorable  review;  and  four  editions  of 
the  poems  were  called  for  in  swift  succession.  Later  on  Taylor 
treated  Clare  rather  badly;  and  subsequent  volumes  of  verse  fell 
off  in  popularity  as  they  improved  in  quality;  but  the  influence  of 
Taylor  and  the  London  on  Clare's  career  is  beyond  question.  The 
brief  hour  of  popularity  gave  the  half-starved,  uneducated,  pottering 
farm  hand  faith  in  himself;  and  in  a  crisis  of  want  and  despair  the 
smoking  flax  of  poetry  was  not  quenched. 

It  seems  strange  to  bracket  with  this  unlettered  peasant  a  wealthy, 
proud  and  excessively  independent  scholar;  but  Walter  Savage 
Landor  also  found  a  publisher  in  Taylor  after  several  members  of 
the  trade  had  rejected  his  MSS.  His  first  "Imaginary  Conversations" 
were  printed  in  1824;  and  his  dialogue  between  Southey  and  Porson 
was  published  some  months  earlier — as  a  "feeler"  for  the  public — in 
The  London  Magazine.  No  such  obvious  debt  can  be  claimed,  per- 
haps, for  Darley,  Cunningham,  Barton,  and  Hartley  Coleridge,  yet 
the  latter  made  his  first  venture  in  that  periodical,  and  the  con- 
nection of  the  others  marked  the  beginning  of  their  best  creative 
period. 

The  magazine  poetry  of  Barton,  Clare,  and  Hartley  Coleridge, 
like  all  their  verse,  is  marked  by  a  sincere  and  childlike  simplicity. 
Barton  in  spite  of  creaking  lines,  tame  moralizings,  and  weak  poeti- 
cal inversions,  gives  consistently  the  impression  of  a  genuine, 
lovable,  and  poetical  spirit.  "His  muse  may  be  said  to  possess  a 
lovely  Quaker  countenance,"   said  his  friendly  reviewer  in  the 

[  203  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

London,  "...  a  Venus  in  a  poke-bonnet."  In  the  poems  of  Clare, 
obvious  but  beautiful  thoughts  and  emotions  gleam  through  the 
limpid,  childlike  language  Uke  pebbles  through  his  own  rural  brooks. 

The  woodbines,  fresh  with  morning  hours, 

Are  what  I  love  to  see; 
The  ivy  spreading  darksom  bowers. 

Is  where  I  love  to  be; 
Left  there,  as  when  a  boy,  to  lie 

And  talk  to  flower  and  tree, 
And  fancy,  in  my  ecstasy. 

Their  silence  answers  me. 

In  Hartley  Coleridge^s  sonnets  to  R.  S.  Jameson  it  is  easy  to  trace 
the  influence  of  his  early  associate  and  father's  friend,  Wordsworth: 

When  we  were  idlers  with  the  loitering  rills. 

The  need  of  human  love  we  little  noted; 

Our  love  was  Nature;  and  the  peace  that  floated 
On  the  white  mist,  and  slept  upon  the  hills. 
To  sweet  accord  subdued  our  wayward  wills.  .  .  . 
But  now  I  find  how  dear  thou  wert  to  me; 

That,  man  is  more  than  half  of  Nature's  treasure. 

There  is  a  more  conscious  and  ornate  style  in  the  verse  contribu- 
tions of  Hood  and  Cunningham,  each  of  whom  printed  at  least  one 
masterly  poem  in  the  magazine.  Hood's  "Lycus  the  Centaur"  and 
Cunningham's  "A  wet  sheet  and  a  flowing  sea."  Hood's  "Fair  Ines" 
has  a  lingering  touch  of  medieval  pageantry: 

I  saw  thee,  lovely  Ines, 

Descend  along  the  shore. 
With  bands  of  noble  gentlemen. 

And  banners  waved  before. 

The  versatility  of  this  metrical  Proteus  had  already  shown  itself 
in  "Faithless  Sally  Brown,"  that  wild  orgy  of  puns,  which  appeared 
in  the  London  for  March,  1822. 

The  London  Magazine  began  at  a  time  when  cosmopolitan  forces 
were  strongly  at  work  in  literature  and  thought,  when  the  reaction 

[  204  ] 


THE  ELIZABETHAN  CURRENT 

after  the  Napoleonic  wars  had  had  time  to  become  effective.  The 
editors  of  the  London  foresaw  the  advantages  of  this  tendency  and 
were  eager  to  promote  it.  In  the  Prospectus  prefixed  to  their  first 
number  they  said:  ^'To  Foreign  Criticism,  therefore,  and  Foreign 
Literature  generally,  as  well  as  to  the  theories  and  progress  of  the 
Fine  Arts  in  the  various  National  Schools  of  Europe,  we  shall  pay 
an  attention  which  has  not  been  hitherto  given  to  them  in  any 
similar  publication."  This  promise  was  kept.  The  critical  and 
scholarly  articles  in  the  magazine  handle  the  literature  of  the 
ancient  Greek  and  Goth,  of  remote  or  modern  periods,  or  both,  in 
Scandinavia,  Germany,  Spain,  Italy,  Russia,  and  little-known 
Serbia.  These  articles  in  their  sum  total  have  a  panoramic  effect 
not  without  its  appeal  to  the  imagination  even  in  our  own  more 
learned  age.  Gary's  chief  work  at  this  time  was  his  discussion  and 
translation  of  the  old  French  poets.  When  we  add  the  sympathy 
and  fairness  of  the  London's  reviews  on  contemporary  poetry,  we 
realize  that  much  of  the  magazine  which  has  no  enduring  character 
as  literature  represented  nevertheless  a  sturdy  effort  in  the  literary 
and  intellectual  cause. 

The  fiction  of  the  magazine  includes  a  number  of  highly  romantic 
tales,  if  by  "romantic"  we  mean  a  mixture  of  sentimentalism  with 
either  supernatural  incidents  or  remote  ages.  Perhaps  the  best  of 
these  is  George  Barley's  "Lilian  of  the  Vale."  In  this  a  feverish  and 
poetical  young  man  falls  in  love  with  a  beautiful  young  female  in 
a  retired  valley;  but  she  vanishes,  leaving  him  unable  to  decide 
whether  she  was  woman,  spirit,  or  delirious  dream.  There  is  also 
prose  of  a  much  more  substantial  type,  as,  for  example,  De  Quincey's 
articles  on  economics  and  education. 

The  two  enduring  glories  of  the  magazine,  however,  are  the 
"Confessions"  and  the  "Essays  of  Elia."  They  were  both  the  master- 
pieces of  lifelong  magazine  writers,  one  of  whom  was  just  entering 
on  his  career,  the  other  reaching  its  culmination.  The  "Confessions" 
are  probably  the  result  of  a  single  and  genuine  aim;  without  any 
great  moral  nobility  they  are  intellectually  sincere.  But,  judged  less 
by  the  way  they  came  from  the  writer's  brain  than  by  the  way  in 
which  they  impinged  on  the  reader's,  they  sounded  with  unconscious 

[  205  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

versatility  the  various  chords  of  contemporary  tendencies.  The 
author  felt  nervously  their  likeness  as  Rousseauistic  confessions  to 
"French  literature  or  to  that  part  of  the  German  which  is  tainted 
with  the  spurious  and  defective  sensibility  of  the  French."  While 
the  opium-eater's  revelation  was  still  freshly  before  the  public,  an 
article  in  Blackwood's  began:  "This  in  confessedly  the  age  of  con- 
fession." De  Quincey  makes  his  appeal  to  the  period's  childlike  and 
none  too  scientific  enthusiasm  about  science.  "I,  who  .  .  .  have 
conducted  my  experiments  upon  this  interesting  subject  with  a  sort 
of  galvanic  battery, — and  have,  for  the  general  benefit  of  the  world, 
inoculated  myself,  as  it  were,  with  the  poison  of  eight  hundred 
drops  of  laudanum  per  day."  For  the  romantic  lover  of  remote  ages 
there  are  gorgeous,  association-haunted  passages:  "At  night,  when 
I  lay  awake  in  bed,  vast  processions  passed  along  in  mournful 
pomp;  friezes  of  never  ending  stories,  that  to  my  feelings  were  as 
sad  and  solemn  as  if  they  were  stories  drawn  from  times  before 
Oedipus  or  Priam,  before  Tyre,  before  Memphis."  We  are  told  that 
some  of  the  pictures  of  Piranesi  "represented  vast  Gothic  halls." 
The  Orientalizing  disciple  of  "Vathek"  and  "Abydos"  enjoys  read- 
ing that  "the  mere  antiquity  of  Asiatic  things,  of  their  institutions, 
histories,  modes  of  faith,  etc.,  is  so  impressive,  that  to  me  the  vast 
age  of  the  race  and  name  overpowers  the  sense  of  youth  in  the 
individual."  Those  who  have  read  that  wild  "Day  of  Judgment" 
which  forms  the  close  for  every  one  of  Blake's  longer  symbolical 
poems  will  feel  as  if  De  Quincey  in  the  intoxication  of  opium  had 
seen  the  same  vision  and  was  describing  it.  "The  morning  was  come 
of  a  mighty  day — a  day  of  crisis  and  of  final  hope  for  human  nature, 
then  suffering  some  mysterious  eclipse,  and  laboring  in  some  dread 
extremity.  Somewhere,  I  knew  not  where — somehow,  I  knew  not 
how — a  battle,  a  strife,  an  agony  was  conducting, — was  evolving 
like  a  great  drama,  or  piece  of  music."  It  is  easy  to  see  why  the 
"Confessions"  took  well  with  the  public.  On  the  one  hand  they 
sounded  all  the  stops  of  powerful  but  failing  romantic  tastes;  on 
the  other,  as  scientific  autobiography,  they  did  not  jar  against 
incipient  realism. 

Similarly,  though  in  a  very  different  manner,  Lamb's  "Essays  of 

[  206  ] 


THE  ELIZABETHAN  CURRENT 

Elia"  blend  the  stock  notes  of  the  romantic  generation  with  others 
not  then  current,  with  echoes  from  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth 
centuries  and  anticipations  of  later  novelists.  He  views  the  old 
South-sea  House  with  Ossianic  eyes,  finds  in  it  "a  desolation  some- 
thing like  Balclutha's,"  and  thrills  as  Byron  or  Chateaubriand  might 
at  the  fascination  of  far-off  countries,  "dusty  maps  of  Mexico,  dim 
as  dreams."  That  wildly  Gothic  and  medieval  poem  of  his  friend 
Hood,  "The  Haunted  House,"  might  claim  a  subdued  and  modest 

cousin  in  his  "Blakesmoor  in  H shire."  "I  do  not  know  a  pleasure 

more  affecting  than  to  range  at  will  over  the  deserted  apartments 
of  some  fine  old  family  mansion,"  he  tells  us,  and  names  with  awe 
the  "tattered  and  diminished  'scutcheon  that  hung  upon  the  time- 
worn  walls  of  thy  princely  stairs,  BLAKESMOOR.  ...  Its  fading 
rags  and  colors  cobweb-stained  told  that  its  subject  was  of  two 
centuries  back."  His  "Complaint  of  the  Decay  of  Beggars"  runs 
parallel  in  thought  to  "The  Old  Cumberland  Beggar"  of  his  former 
friend  Wordsworth.  We  suspect  that  his  essay  on  chimney-sweepers 
owed  something  to  the  poetry  on  chimney-sweeps  by  Blake,  poetry 
which  he  had  read  some  years  before.  Lamb  describes  them  as 
"tender  novices  .  .  .  with  their  little  professional  notes  sounding 
like  the  peep  peep  of  a  young  sparrow  .  .  .  poor  blots — innocent 
blacknesses";  thereby  touching  the  same  sympathetic  chord  as 

A  little  black  thing  among  the  snow, 
Crying  "weep!  weep!"  in  notes  of  woe! 

Like  Blake  and  Wordsworth  both  he  considers  the  child  as  the 
unruined  exponent  of  the  poetical  mood.  "Ye  inexplicable  half 
understood  appearances,  why  comes  in  reason  to  tear  away  the  pre- 
ternatural mist,  bright  or  gloomy,  that  enshrouded  you  ?  Why  make 
ye  so  sorry  a  figure  in  my  relation,  who  made  up  to  me — to  my 
childish  eyes — the  mythology  of  the  Temple?  In  those  days  I  saw 
Gods  as  ^old  men  covered  with  a  mantle,'  walking  upon  the  earth. 
Let  the  dreams  of  classic  idolatry  perish, — extinct  be  the  fairies 
and  fairy  trumpery  of  legendary  fabling,  in  the  heart  of  childhood, 
there  will,  forever,  spring  up  a  well  of  innocent  or  wholesome  super- 
stition. ...  In  that  little  Goshen  there  will  be  light,  when  the 

[  207  ] 


/  ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

grown  world  flounders  about  in  the  darkness  of  sense  and  mate- 
riality. While  childhood,  and  while  dreams,  reducing  childhood, 
shall  be  left,  imagination  shall  not  have  spread  her  holy  wings 
totally  to  fly  the  earth."  His  essays,  coming  in  the  "age  of  confes- 
sion," are  full  of  personal  history,  none  the  less  autobiographical 
because  often  disguised  and  modestly  suppressed.  Lamb  had  little 
affinity  with  either  the  national  antiquarianism  of  Scott  or  the  fan- 
tastic medievalism  of  Keats  and  Coleridge;  he  lived  in  the  present 
and  wrote  of  it;  yet  over  it  he  repeatedly  diffuses  an  atmosphere  of 
antique  glamour.  He  tells  us  himself  that  his  essays  are  "pranked 
in  an  affected  array  of  antique  modes  and  phrases";  and  describes 
one  of  them  as  "some  half  forgotten  humors  of  some  old  clerks 
defunct,  in  an  old  house  of  business,  long  since  gone  to  decay." 
"What  an  antique  air  had  the  now  almost  effaced  sundials,  with 
their  moral  inscriptions,  seeming  coevals  with  that  Time  which  they 
measured."  That  romantic  love  of  past  years  and  old  associations 
which  at  times  had  proved  wildly  intoxicating  and  at  others  unspeak- 
ably insipid,  here  becomes  mellowed  like  rare  old  wine.  "Antiquity! 
thou  wondrous  charm,"  he  cries,  "what  art  thou  that,  being  nothing, 
art  everything!  .  .  .  What  mystery  lurks  in  this  retroversion?  or 
what  half  Januses  are  we,  that  cannot  look  forward  with  the  same 
idolatry  with  which  we  forever  revert!  The  mighty  future  is  as 
nothing,  being  everything!  the  past  is  everything,  being  nothing!" 
This  was  said  at  Oxford,  that  seminary  of  medieval  poetry  from 
the  days  of  Tom  Warton  down.  To  such  an  extent  Lamb  was  the 
child  of  his  age.  If  in  many  other  ways  he  was  not,  that  fact  simply 
illustrates  the  old  truth  that  great  literature  is  colored  but  not 
created  by  passing  changes  of  taste. 

The  two  anni  mirabiles  of  The  London  Magazine  were  182 1  and 
1822.  After  that  it  began  to  fall  off,  and  from  the  end  of  1824  on 
dragged  along  a  posthumous  existence  of  no  concern  to  literature. 
The  letters  of  Lamb  to  Bernard  Barton  during  this  period  sound 
like  a  dirge.  May,  1823:  "I  cannot  but  think  the  London  drags 
heavily.  I  miss  Janus.  And  O  how  it  misses  Hazlitt!  Procter  too  is 
affronted  (as  Janus  has  been)  with  their  abominable  curtailment 
of  his  things."  September,  1823:  "The  London,  I  fear,  falls  off. — I 

[  208  ] 


THE  ELIZABETHAN  CURRENT 

linger  among  its  creaking  rafters,  like  the  last  rat."  February,  1825: 
"Our  2d  No.  is  all  trash.  What  are  T.  and  H.  about?  .  .  .  Why  did 
poor  Scott  die?  There  was  comfort  in  writing  with  such  associates 
as  were  his  little  band  of  Scribblers,  some  gone  away,  some  affronted 
away,  and  I  am  left  as  the  solitary  widow  looking  for  water  cresses." 
Lamb  was  loath  to  give  up  the  London,  of  which  he  truly  said:  "I 
used  up  all  my  best  thoughts  in  that  publication";  but  at  last  it 
became  too  soulless  even  for  him.  In  August,  1825,  his  last  con- 
tribution to  the  magazine  was  printed;  and  in  that  same  month  he 
wrote  to  Barton:  "Taylor  has  dropt  the  London.  It  was  indeed  a 
dead  weight.  ...  I  shuffle  off  my  part  of  the  pack,  and  stand  like 
Xtian  with  light  and  merry  shoulders."  From  that  hour,  though  the 
magazine  ran  four  years  longer,  no  mention  of  it  occurs  in  Lamb's 
correspondence. 

A  word  may  be  said  here  about  non-periodical  work  by  authors 
of  this  group.  That  of  some  has  already  been  discussed;  that  of 
others,  such  as  Talfourd  and  Hartley  Coleridge,  belongs  mainly  to 
a  period  after  1830.  Allan  Cunningham  in  1822  published  his  drama 
"Sir  Marmaduke  Maxwell,"  and  had  written  his  narrative  poem, 
"The  Maid  of  Elvar,"  by  1819,  though  it  was  not  published  until 
1833.  Scott  praised  in  "Sir  Marmaduke"  the  supernatural  element, 
which  to  any  one  but  an  early  nineteenth-century  Scotchman  ap- 
pears rather  crude;  and  Wordsworth  expressed  approval  for  the 
trailing  Spenserian  stanzas  of  "The  Maid  of  Elvar."  Few  moderns, 
we  suspect,  could  find  anj^ing  of  interest  in  either  save  through 
their  connection  with  the  medieval  and  Gothic  currents  of  taste. 
"Honest  Allan's"  fugitive  lyrics  in  the  London  have  far  greater 
permanent  value  than  his  more  ambitious  attempts. 

John  Clare  published  the  bult  of  his  poetry  between  1820  and 
1827.  What  he  owed  to  the  London  group  was  encouragement, 
rather  than  a  particular  type  of  inspiration.  This  last  came  to  him 
mainly  from  his  rural  surroundings,  which  were  so  unlike  those  of 
Hazlitt,  Procter,  and  Lamb. 

I  found  the  poems  in  the  fields, 
And  only  wrote  them  down. 

[  209  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

As  far  as  he  was  consciously  the  disciple  of  a  literary  tradition,  it 
was  that  of  the  nature  poets,  Burns,  Cow^er,  Wordsworth,  and 
Crabbe,  all  of  whose  poems  formed  part  of  his  scanty  library  as 
early  as  1821.  Like  his  city  acquaintances,  however,  he  "had  a 
fondness  for  the  poetry  of  the  time  of  Elizabeth,"  which  showed 
itself  especially  in  metrical  details,  and  in  which  they  must  have 
encouraged  him.  Few  men  have  been  more  poetical  in  their  moods 
than  Clare,  though  his  work  is  a  mournful  proof  that  moods  alone, 
without  strength  of  character  and  commanding  intellect,  cannot 
become  supremely  great. 

If  Clare's  poems  were  those  of  the  fields.  Hood's  were  those  of 
the  town.  The  verse  which  he  poured  out  so  plentifully  during  the 
third  decade  of  the  century  was  mainly  humorous,  whims,  parodies, 
and  burlesques.  All  the  literary  stock-in-trade  of  the  age  is  passed 
over  with  good-natured  ridicule:  the  Oriental  tale,  the  medieval 
legend,  the  ballad,  the  fairy  tale,  the  ghost  story.  In  "Faithless  Sally 
Brown"  and  "Faithless  Nelly  Gray"  the  torch  of  the  arch-punster 
passes  into  his  hands  from  those  of  Lamb,  whose  fondness  for 
verbal  quibbles  had  been  fed  for  years  by  the  example  of  his  beloved 
Elizabethans.  Little  of  this  humorous  verse,  readable  as  it  is,  has 
much  enduring  value;  but  it  sold  well,  which  explains  why  it  was 
written;  and  Hood  during  these  years  was,  Cunningham  tells  us, 
"better  known  to  the  world  as  a  dexterous  punster  tiian  as  a  true 
poet."  This  yielding  of  the  poet  to  the  popular  demand  was  eyed 
askance  by  some  of  his  friends;  and  Hartley  Coleridge  wrote  to 
him  in  protest:  "In  whatever  you  attempt  you  excel.  Then  why  not 
exert  your  best  and  noblest  talent,  as  well  as  that  wit,  which  I  would 
never  wish  to  be  dominant."  A  short  time  previous  Hood  had  pub- 
lished his  dramatic  and  somber  poem,  "The  Dream  of  Eugene 
Aram";  but  aside  from  this  and  a  few  of  his  earlier  contributions 
to  the  London  he  almost  consistently  before  1830  wore  the  cap  and 
bells.  His  most  "romantic"  poem,  "The  Haunted  House,"  with  its 
unearthly  atmosphere  and  its  motto  from  Wordsworth's  "Hart-leap 
Well,"  was  first  printed  in  Hood's  Magazine  in  1844,  his  "Bridge 
of  Sighs"  and  "Song  of  the  Shirt"  appearing  at  about  the  same  time. 

Of  the  four  professional  magazine  writers  of  the  period  who  have 

[  210  ] 


THE  ELIZABETHAN  CURRENT 

made  lasting  reputations  through  their  work  in  that  field,  Lamb, 
Hazlitt,  De  Quincey,  and  Hood,  all  were  connected  with  The  London 
Magazine.  Two  of  these  men.  Hood  and  De  Quincey,  after  their 
London  novitiate,  edited  or  contributed  to  various  other  periodicals. 
The  London  encouraged  the  genius  of  its  children,  and  had  a  stimu- 
lating effect  on  later  periodical  literature;  but  its  brief  and  incon- 
sistent career  is  melancholy  proof  that  the  best  literary  art  is  not 
compatible  with  the  financial  success  of  a  magazine. 


[   211    ] 


CHAPTER  X 

The  Expatriated  Poets  and  the  Italian  Movement  in 

Poetry 

The  history  of  English  poetry  is  largely  one  of  cross  fertilization; 
and  no  foreign  literature  has  enriched  what  was  best  in  it  more  than 
the  Italian.  Chaucer  owed  much  to  it.  Wyatt  and  Surrey  brought 
the  sonnet  from  it  into  English  verse.  The  debt  of  Shakespeare  and 
his  fellow  dramatists,  both  in  general  spirit  and  in  plots  of  plays, 
would  fill  an  enormous  volume.  Mllt^  when  young  traveled  in  Italy, 
and  is  said  to  have  taken  the  first  idea  of  his  great  epic  from  a  crude 
Italian  play. 

After  the  Restoration  of  Charles  II  the  Italian  influence  in  poetry 
declined,  and  from  the  time  of  Pope  became  very  small  indeed. 
Until  1750  or  1760  the  chief  foreign  coloring  was  from  France. 
After  that  the  intellect  of  Great  Britain  itself  became  the  seminal 
mind  of  Europe,  and  for  half  a  century  scattered  the  seeds  of 
"Ossian,"  "The  Night  Thoughts,"  Thomson  and  Gray  broadcast 
on  the  continent.  The  importation  from  Germany  was  in  many  ways 
ill  guided  and  ill  fated;  all  the  Scotch  authors  were  essentially  in- 
digenous products;  and  such  foreign  influences  as  worked  on  Words- 
worth, Southey  or  Coleridge  were  French  or  Teutonic.  From  1700 
to  1 81 6  one  finds  woefully  few  traces  of  that  literary  Gulf  Stream 
from  the  Mediterranean  which  had  warmed  the  age  of  Elizabeth 
into  poetry. 

That  this  should  have  been  true  through  the  insulated  eighteenth 
century  is  not  surprising,  but  one  might  have  expected  the  new  tide 
earlier  in  the  nineteenth.  Travel  conditions  probably  had  something 
to  do  with  the  delay.  In  Shakespeare's  day  hundreds  of  young  men 
were  making  the  grand  tour  of  Italy  at  the  very  time  when  the 

[  212  ] 


THE  EXPATRIATED  POETS 

Italian  coloring  was  so  marked  in  their  poetry.  Between  1786  and 
1803,  while  the  German  wave  was  gathering  and  subsiding,  William 
Taylor  of  Norwich,  Ann  Radcliffe,  Matt  Lewis,  Wordsworth,  Cole- 
ridge, Campbell,  Crabb  Robinson,  and  we  know  not  how  many  other 
English  men  of  letters,  visited  Germany.  During  the  opening  years 
of  the  nineteenth  century  the  disrupted  state  of  Italy  and  the  power 
of  Napoleon  there  tended  to  discourage  British  travelers.  Byron  did 
not  visit  it  in  the  journey  that  produced  the  first  two  cantos  of 
"Childe  Harold";  and  Coleridge,  when  in  Rome,  practically  fled 
for  his  life  from  the  suspicion  of  Bonaparte.  The  Italian  strain  in  - 
English  poetry  became  marked  very  soon  after  Waterloo. 

In  the  autumn  of  181 6  Byron,  after  a  brief  stay  in  Switzerland, 
moved  into  Italy,  and  lived  there  continuously  for  about  seven 
years.  In  March,  181 8,  Shelley  left  England  forever,  and  during 
the  remainder  of  his  life  was  an  Italian  resident.  A  large  part  of 
Byron's  best  work  and  nearly  all  of  Shelley's  was  written  on  the 
ground  where  Dante,  Tasso,  and  Petrarch  had  written  centuries 
before.  For  many  years,  also,  Walter  Savage  Landor,  though  he  had 
little  to  do  either  with  Shelley  and  Byron  or  with  popular  currents 
of  literature,  was  a  dweller  in  the  same  country. 

The  first  man  who  made  the  Italian  current  conspicuous  in  the*  •  • 
public  eye,  however,  was  neither  a  great  poet  nor  a  resident  in  Italy,  •  • 
though  he  probably  knew  a  good  deal  of  Italian  Uterature.  This  -^' 
was  John  Hookham  Frere.  Member  of  a  family  of  diplomats,  he 
was  engaged  in  important  diplomatic  service  from  1800  to  1804 
at  Lisbon  and  Madrid,  and  again  at  the  latter  station  1808-09.  After 
that,  feeling  that  he  had  been  unjustly  criticized,  he  withdrew  to 
private  life,  but  was  for  many  years  in  active  correspondence  with 
his  brother,  who  was  secretary  of  the  British  Legation  at  Constan- 
tinople. He  was  thus,  like  Byron,  and  even  before  B)Ton,  in  touch 
with  the  thought  of  the  Mediterranean  peoples.  As  a  result  of  his 
years  in  Spain  he  played  a  subordinate  part  in  the  Spanish  literary 
current.  Three  of  his  translations  from  tie  "Poem  of  the  Cid"  were 
printed  as  an  appendix  to  Southey's  "Chronicle  of  the  Cid";  and 
many  years  later  he  corresponded  with  Southey,  aiding  him  in  his 
"Peninsular  War." 

[213] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

During  his  London  life  Frere  was  one  of  the  Holland  House  wits, 
and  might  have  been  included  in  that  group  of  poets.  Lord  and  Lady 
Holland  were  old  friends;  they  had  spent  some  months  at  Lisbon 
when  he  was  there;  and  on  a  window  in  Holland  House  Frere  wrote: 

May  neither  Fire  destroy,  nor  Waste  impair, 
Nor  Time  consume  thee,  till  the  twentieth  heir; 
May  Taste  respect  thee,  and  may  Fashion  spare. 

Most  of  his  work,  all  of  his  best,  is  mildly  satirical.  In  1797  he  was 
one  of  the  authors,  in  The  Anti-Jacobin,  of  "The  Rovers,"  "The 
Loves  of  the  Triangles,"  and  those  other  pungent  take-offs  on 
Darwin  and  melodrama.  His  "Prospectus  and  Specimen  of  an  in- 
tended National  Work,  by  William  and  Robert  Whistlecraft"  is  a 
burlesque  of  tales  on  medieval  chivalry: 

Beginning  (as  my  Bookseller  desires) 
Like  an  old  Minstrel  with  his  gown  and  beard. 

This  poem,  however,  though  in  harmony  with  the  spirit  of  Pope, 
is  in  a  manner  very  different  and  new  in  English  poetry.  It  is 
modeled  on  the  Italian  mock-heroic  writers,  and  uses  their  ottava 
rima,  which  had  once  been  fairly  common  in  English  verse  but  had 
fallen  into  disuse  for  over  a  century.  Though  enjoyable  reading,  it 
was  neither  great  nor  directly  very  influential  on  the  public  mind; 
but  it  set  fire  to  Byron  and  produced  from  him  his  "Beppo,"  and, 
as  a  result  of  "Beppo,"  "Don  Juan."  In  October,  181 7,  Byron  wrote 
to  Murray  announcing  "Beppo,"  and  said:  "I  have  written  a  poem 
of  eighty-four  octave  stanzas,  humorous,  in  or  after  the  excellent 
manner  of  WTiistlecraft  (whom  I  take  to  be  Frere)."  Again,  March, 
1 81 8:  "The  style  is  not  English,  it  is  Italian;  Berni  is  the  original 
of  all;  Whistlecraft  was  my  immediate  model."  How  closely  Frere 
was  his  "immediate  model"  one  does  not  realize  until  he  has  read 
the  earlier  poem: 

I've  finished  now  three  hundred  lines  and  more, 
And  therefore  I  begin  Canto  the  Second, 

Just  like  those  wandering  ancient  Bards  of  Yore; 
They  never  laid  a  plan,  nor  ever  reckon 'd 

[  214] 


THE  EXPATRIATED  POETS 

What  turning  they  should  take  the  day  before; 

They  follow'd  where  the  lovely  Muses  beckon'd: 
The  Muses  led  them  up  to  Mount  Parnassus, 
And  that's  the  reason  that  they  all  surpass  us; 


or 


When  those  vile  cannibals  were  overpowered, 
Only  two  fat  Duennas  were  devour'd. 

It  is  doubtful  how  thoroughly  Frere  knew  his  continental  models; 
but  Byron,  by  adoption  already  an  Italian,  understood  them  well 
and  pursued  the  trail  with  vigor.  His  "Beppo,"  unlike  Frere^s  poem, 
is  Italian  in  characters  and  location  as  well  as  in  manner.  He  fol- 
lowed this  up  with  his  "Vision  of  Judgment"  and  "Don  Juan," 
poems  which  might  antagonize  an  audience  but  could  not  fail  to 
impress  them.  His  Italian  environment  may  have  fostered  their 
indecency  as  well  as  their  greatness,  for  he  remarks  in  the  first 
canto  of  "Don  Juan"  that 

What  men  call  gallantry,  and  gods  adultery. 

Is  much  more  common  where  the  climate's  sultry. 

In  the  fourth  canto  he  defines  his  relationship  to  his  Italian  models: 

To  the  kind  reader  of  our  sober  clime 

This  way  of  writing  will  appear  exotic; 
Pulci  was  sire  of  the  half-serious  rhyme. 

Who  sang  when  chivalry  was  more  Quixotic, 
And  revell'd  in  the  fancies  of  the  time, 

True  knights,  chaste  dames,  huge  giants,  kings  despotic; 
But  all  these,  save  the  last,  being  obsolete, 
I  chose  a  modem  subject  as  more  meet. 

Byron  likewise  translated  part  of  Pulci's  "Morgante  Maggiore"  in 
ottava  rima,  and  in  the  advertisement  to  it  commented  on  Frere's 
debt  to  the  old  Italian  satirists.  Southey  also  felt  that  here  was  a 
new  phenomenon  in  poetry,  and  wrote  to  Landor  in  1820:  "A 
fashion  of  poetry  has  been  imported  which  has  had  a  great  run,  and 
is  in  a  fair  way  of  being  worn  out.  It  is  of  Italian  growth, — an 
adaptation  of  the  manner  of  Pulci,  Berni,  and  Ariosto  in  his  sportive 

[  215  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

mood.  Frere  began  it.  What  he  produced  was  too  good  in  itself  and 
too  inoffensive  to  become  popular.  .  .  .  Lord  Byron  immediately- 
followed;  first  with  his  'Beppo/  which  implied  the  profligacy  of  the 
writer,  and  lastly,  with  his  'Don  Juan,'  which  is  a  foul  blot  on  the 
literature  of  his  country,  an  act  of  high  treason  on  English  poetry. 
The  manner  has  had  a  host  of  imitators." 

The  ''host  of  imitators"  are,  as  usual,  no  company  for  a  man 
loving  good  poetry;  but  as  one  of  the  most  popular  and  least  un- 
worthy we  may  mention  "Barry  Cornwall,"  whose  "Gyges"  and 
"Diego  de  Montilla"  both  play  the  sedulous  ape  to  Frere  and  Byron. 
The  latter  poem  begins: 

The  octave  rhyme  (Ital.  ottava  rima) 

Is  a  delightful  measure  made  of  ease 
Turn'd  up  with  epigram,  and,  tho'  it  seem  a 

Verse  that  a  man  may  scribble  when  he  please. 
Is  somewhat  difficult;  indeed,  I  deem  a 

Stanza  like  Spenser's  will  be  found  to  tease 
Less,  or  heroic  couplet:  there,  the  pen 
May  touch  and  polish  and  touch  up  again. 

Among  minor  mock-heroic  productions  of  the  type  may  be  men- 
tioned Tom  Hood's  "Two  Peacocks  of  Bedfont,"  "Bianca's  Dream, 
A  Venetian  Story,"  and  several  other  short  poems. 

In  addition  to  the  direct  satirical  current  mentioned  by  Byron 
and  Southey,  there  was  a  great  and  sudden  increase  after  1817  in 
the  use  of  lie  long  neglected  ottava  rima  for  serious  poetry.  Shelley 
adopted  it  for  his  "Witch  of  Atlas"  (1820),  in  which  the  intro- 
ductory stanzas  are  in  the  half-mocking  style  of  Berni,  but  those 
of  the  narrative  itself  in  the  seriousness  of  unearthly  beauty.  He 
employed  it  also  in  the  short  poem  "The  Zucca."  Keats  used  the 
Italian  cadence  for  his  Italian  story  of  "Isabella"  (1820).  Charles 
Lloyd,  who  had  never  tried  that  metre  before,  poured  out  hundreds 
of  stanzas  in  it  between  1820  and  1822,  "Desultory  Thoughts  in 
London,"  "Titus  and  Gisippus,"  and  "Beritola,"  the  last  an  Italian 
tale,  and  both  of  the  last  partly  borrowed  from  Boccaccio.  He  tells 
us  that  he  never  dreamed  of  copying  the  style  of  Pulci;  but  the 
monthly  reviewers,  he  admits,  declare  "that  he  has  attempted  to 

[  216  ]       . 


THE  EXPATRIATED  POETS 

imitate,  and  failed  in  the  attempt,  the  mixture  of  pathos  and  himior 
of  the  Italian  writers." 

The  mock-heroic  tone  and  eight-line  stanza,  however,  were  only 
part  of  a  much  larger  borrowing  from  Italian  tradition  and  literature 
in  the  form  of  narrative  material.  The  "romantic"  longing  for  some 
new  national  antiquity  to  write  about,  having  traversed  Scotland, 
England,  Wales,  Germany,  and  Spain,  came  at  last  to  the  land  of 
Horace  and  Vergil.  By  1820  "Barry  Cornwall,"  one  of  those  light 
popular  weathercocks  who  show  best  which  way  the  wind  is  blowing, 
could  write: 

For  ever  and  for  ever  shalt  thou  be 

Unto  the  lover  and  the  poet  dear. 

Thou  land  of  sunlit  skies  and  fountains  clear. 

Of  temples,  and  gray  columns,  and  waving  woods, 

And  mountains,  from  whose  rifts  the  bursting  floods 

Rush  in  bright  tumult  to  the  Adrian  sea: 

O  thou  romantic  land  of  Italy! 

His  "Marcian  Colonna"  is  an  Italian  verse  narrative,  to  which  is 
prefixed  a  quotation  from  Byron's  "Lament  of  Tasso."  Several  of 
"Cornwairs"  brief  and  not  badly  written  dramatic  scenes  are  from 
Italian  history  or  legend:  "Ludovico  Sforza,"  "The  Way  to  Con- 
quer," "The  Broken  Heart,"  "The  Falcon,"  "Michael  Angelo," 
"Raffaelle  and  Fornarina,"  "The  Florentine  Party."  His  "Sicilian 
Story"  is  from  the  tale  of  "The  Decameron"  that  Keats  retold  so 
much  better  in  "Isabella."  J.  H.  Reynolds  derived  his  "Garden  of 
Florence"  from  Boccaccio;  and  Charles  Wells's  "Stories  from 
Nature"  contained  half  a  dozen  prose  Italian  tales.  With  the  excep- 
tion of  Byron  and  Frere,  all  writers  mentioned  so  far  were  connected 
with  the  eddy  around  Leigh  Hunt  and  stood  for  the  Italian  phase 
of  that  tradition-breeding  movement.  Hunt  in  181 8,  in  his  "Epistle 
to  Lord  Byron,"  pointed  out  the  significance  of  this  tendency: 

All  the  four  great  Masters  of  our  Song 
Stars  that  shine  out  amidst  a  starry  throng. 
Have  turned  to  Italy  for  added  light. 
As  earth  is  kissed  by  the  sweet  moon  at  night  ;^ — 
Milton  for  half  his  style,  Chaucer  for  tales, 
""^  [  217  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

Spenser  for  flowers  to  fill  his  isles  and  vales, 

And  Shakespeare's  self  for  frames  already  done 

To  build  his  everlasting  piles  upon. 

Her  genius  is  more  soft,  harmonious,  fine; 

Ours  bolder,  deeper,  and  more  masculine: 

In  short,  as  woman's  sweetness  to  man's  force. 

Less  grand,  but  softening  by  the  intercourse. 

So  the  two  countries  are, — so  may  they  be, — 

England  the  high-souled  man,  the  charmer  Italy. 

The  Italian  current,  however,  was  by  no  means  confined  to  the 
"Cockneys."  Samuel  Rogers,  during  the  brief  restoration  of  the 
Bourbon  French  king  before  the  "hundred  days,"  had  made  through 
Italy  one  of  those  journeys  that  the  Napoleonic  wars  had  previously 
rendered  so  difficult.  This  had  ripened  in  his  mind  while  the  poems 
of  his  old  friend  Byron  and  his  new  friend  "Cornwall"  were  appear- 
ing; and  in  1822  and  1828  respectively  he  published  the  two  parts 
of  his  "Italy."  Unlike  all  the  poet's  previous  work,  both  in  metre 
and  mood,  it  consists  of  a  series  of  very  brief  narratives  or  descrip- 
tive sketches,  a  few  in  prose,  most  of  them  in  pleasing  though  not 
very  powerful  blank  verse. 

There  is  a  glorious  City  in  the  Sea. 
The  Sea  is  in  the  broad,  the  narrow  streets. 
Ebbing  and  flowing;  and  the  salt  sea-weed 
Clings  to  the  marble  of  her  palaces; 

or  we  have  a  vision  of  Galileo  in  young  manhood, 

Chanting  aloud  in  gaiety  of  heart 
Some  verse  of  Ariosto. 

At  every  page  in  "Italy"  we  trace  the  influence  of  that  great,  ill- 
balanced  friend  whose  apology  it  contains : 

Yes,  Byron,  thou  art  gone. 
Gone  like  a  star  that  through  the  firmament 
Shot  and  was  lost,  in  its  eccentric  course 
Dazzling,  perplexing.  Yet  thy  heart,  methinks. 
Was  generous,  noble — noble  in  its  scorn 
Of  all  things  low  or  little. 

[  218  ] 


THE  EXPATRIATED  POETS 

Much  later,  in  1837,  Wordsworth,  the  literary  opposite  but  personal 
friend  of  Rogers,  made  a  similar  journey  and  wrote  on  the  strength 
of  it  his  "Memorials  of  a  Tour  in  Italy."  In  this  field  the  lesser  poet 
reaped  the  better  harvest. 

More  fruitful  than  either  was  Hazlitt's  brief  trip  in  1824  which 
resulted  in  his  "Journey  through  France  and  Italy."  One  feels  that 
the  chapters  dealing  with  the  latter  country  are  more  colored  by 
sentiment,  by  awe  at  the  great  past,  by  what  is  usually  called 
romanticism,  than  those  on  the  French  landscape  and  people.  The 
trail  of  "Childe  Harold"  is  obvious.  Like  Byron  the  author  cries 
in  Rome:  "Come  here,  oh  man!  and  worship  thine  own  spirit,  that 
can  hoard  up,  as  in  a  shrine,  the  treasures  of  two  thousand  years, 
and  can  create  out  of  the  memory  of  fallen  splendors  and  departed 
grandeur  a  solitude  deeper  than  that  of  desert  wildernesses.  .  .  . 
Not  far  from  this  are  the  baths  of  Titus;  the  grass  and  the  poppy 
(the  flowers  of  oblivion)  grow  over  them.  ...  A  few  paces  off  is 
the  Coliseum,  or  Amphitheatre  of  Titus,  the  noblest  ruin  in  Rome. 
...  As  you  pass  under  it,  it  seems  to  raise  itself  above  you,  and 
mingle  with  the  sky  in  its  majestic  simplicity,  as  if  earth  were  a 
thing  too  gross  for  it."  The  ocean  becomes  for  him  Byron's  "image 
of  eternity,"  the 

glorious  mirror  where  the  Almighty's  form 
Glasses  itself  in  tempest. 

"There  is  something  in  being  near  the  sea,  like  the  confines  of 
eternity.  It  is  a  new  element,  a  pure  abstraction.  The  mind  loves  to 

hover  on  that  which  is  endless,  and  forever  the  same Great 

as  thou  art,  unconscious  of  thy  greatness,  unwieldy,  enormous, 
preposterous,  twin-birth  of  matter,  rest  in  thy  dark,  unfathomed 
cave  of  mystery,  mocking  human  pride  and  weakness."  The  descrip- 
tion of  Radicofani  is  an  outburst  of  romantic  medievalism  never 
equaled  in  Hazlitt's  writing  on  English  ground,  perhaps  because, 
unlike  Scott,  he  had  lived  among  the  inland  towns  of  England  and 
not  on  the  scenes  of  her  old  border  wars.  "It  reminded  me,  by  its 
preternatural  strength  and  sullen  aspect,  of  the  castle  of  Giant 
Despair  in  The  Pilgrim's  Progress.'  The  dark  and  stern  spirit  of 

[  219  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

former  times  might  be  conceived  to  have  entrenched  itself  here  as 
in  its  last  hold;  to  have  looked  out  and  laughed  at  precipices  and 
storms,  and  the  puny  assaults  of  hostile  bands,  and  resting  on  its 
red  right  arm,  to  have  wasted  away  through  inaction  and  disuse  in 
its  unapproachable  solitude  and  barbarous  desolation.  Never  did 
I  see  anything  so  rugged  and  so  stately,  apparently  so  formidable 
in  a  former  period,  so  forlorn  in  this.  It  was  a  majestic  shadow  of 
the  mighty  past,  suspended  in  another  region,  belonging  to  another 
age." 

The  most  important  journey  of  all,  though  less  connected  with 
our  subject  than  the  others,  was  that  of  the  great  painter  Turner. 
About  1 819  he  followed  Shelley  and  preceded  Keats  in  his  first 
pilgrimage  to  the  land  of  Raphael  and  Correggio;  and  this  sojourn 
in  the  south  eventually  had  a  marked  effect  on  his  artistic  manner, 
especially  increasing  the  lightness  and  brilliance  of  his  color.  In 
1823  he  gave  the  world  his  "Bay  of  Baiae,"  "the  first  of  those 
glorious  dramas  of  Italy  which  are  especially  associated  with  his 
name.'^  Most  of  Turner's  great  Italian  paintings  were  done  after  the 
end  of  the  Romantic  generation;  but  in  1830  he  furnished  his  admir- 
able illustrations  to  Rogers's  "Italy." 

The  minor  poets  after  Waterloo  have  many  other  poems  of  Italian 
origin  or  inspiration  at  intervals  through  their  volumes.  Mrs. 
Hemans  leads  us  to  "Naples  and  her  lovely  bay"  in  "The  Death  of 
Conradin."  Milman's  greatly  overrated  play  "Fazio"  (181 5)  was 
one  of  the  first  forerunners  of  the  general  invasion.  It  is  a  story  of 
erring  justice,  and  so  is  the  history  of  its  reception;  for  it  made 
Milman  Professor  of  Poetry  at  Oxford,  while  Keats  was  caviare  and 
Shelley  anathema.  Still  earlier  came  Lord  Thurlow's  "Hei^milda" 
(1812),  a  weak  imitation  of  Tasso  in  ottava  rima,  and  his  feebly 
sentimental  "Doge's  Daughter"  (1814).  R.  E.  Landor,  inspired 
perhaps  by  the  Italian  residence  of  his  greater  brother,  in  1824 
roused  a  passing  ripple  of  interest  by  his  "Count  Arezzi."  In  1825 
Thomas  Wade,  as  yet  a  mere  boy  and  an  almost  too  subservient 
admirer  of  Shelley,  published  five  poems  under  the  title  of  "Tasso 
and  the  Sisters."  In  them  we  find  Italian  subject-matter,  ottava 
rima,  and  very  obvious  imitation  of  "The  Witch  of  Atlas,"  combined 

[  220  ] 


THE  EXPATRIATED  POETS 

with  much  immaturity  and  not  a  little  genuine  poetry.  Of  his  play, 
*  Woman's  Love"  (acted  in  1828),  he  says  in  the  Preface:  "The 
sources  from  whence  the  story  of  this  drama  is  derived,  are  well 
known  to  the  readers  of  Boccaccio,  Petrarch  and  Chaucer.  Goldoni's 
elegant  genius  adorned  with  it  the  stage  of  Italy;  but  the  author  of 
the  present  work  had  no  opportunity  of  perusing  the  ^Griselda'  until 
after  the  completion  of  Woman's  Love.' "  This  imitative  but  really 
meritorious  play  went  promptly  through  two  editions.  Like  "The 
Cenci"  of  Wade's  idol  Shelley  it  was  at  once  Italian  and  yet  strongly 
colored  by  the  Elizabethan  dramatists.  Mary  R.  Mitford  between 
1820  and  1830  wrote  three  rather  popular  verse  dramas  on  Italian 
themes,  "Fiesco,"  "The  Foscari,"  and  "Rienzi."  William  Sotheby, 
who  many  years  before  had  helped  to  imitate  the  Scotch  poetry  out 
of  existence,  in  1828  fathered  a  wearisome  effusion  imitating 
Rogers's  poem  and  identical  in  title.  "Romantic  Italy"  had  become 
part  of  the  literary  stock  in  trade,  like  the  other  "romantic"  coun- 
tries, and  eventually  led  to  the  novels  of  Bulwer-Lytton,  '^'Rienzi," 
"Zanoni,"  "The  Last  Days  of  Pompeii." 

Among  the  forces  making  for  this  tendency,  it  must  be  remem- 
bered that  the  wars  of  Napoleon  had  brought  one  phase  of  Italy 
three  quarters  of  the  way  to  London.  The  Corsican  conqueror  had 
filled  Parisian  art  galleries  with  the  rarest  treasures  of  transalpine 
genius;  and  when  the  fall  of  Bonaparte  opened  these  galleries  to 
foreigners,  Englishmen  by  a  brief  journey  could  see  landscapes  and 
portraits  previously  too  remote  for  any  save  a  few.  The  poet  Croly 
in  1 81 5  visited  Paris,  and  there  saw  on  the  glowing  canvas. 

Superb  Venetian,  pearl  and  purple  stoled; 
Romantic  Lombard,  fiery  Florentine, 
Brightening,  as  up  the  Alp  the  evening's  gold 
From  the  deep  vineyard  to  the  crown  of  pine. 

Croly  was  only  one  visitor  among  thousands  of  British  and  dozens 
of  authors. 

A  special  current  from  Italy  was  that  of  her  greatest  poet  Dante. 
During  the  eighteenth  century  he  had  been  like  St.  Paul  to  a 
medieval  Catholic,  an  author  to  be  much  revered  and  never  read. 

[  221  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

Near  the  turn  of  the  century  Hayley  had  translated  a  fragment  of 
"The  Divine  Comedy,"  and  Boyd  the  entire  poem,  in  a  manner  not 
likely  to  increase  its  audience.  Cary  in  1805  published  his  admirable 
translation  of  "The  Inferno/'  and  in  1814  that  of  the  whole  work; 
but  this  was  very  indifferently  received  at  first.  The  discerning 
public  made  the  translator  bring  out  the  complete  poem  at  his  own 
expense,  a  method  of  encouraging  poetry  not  wholly  forgotten  in 
our  own  enlightened  age.  Apparently  Dante  had  neither  audience 
nor  imitators  until  the  downfall  of  Napoleon  turned  English  life  and 
thought  once  more  toward  the  Mediterranean.  A  few  discerning 
men  loved  him.  Coleridge,  for  example,  in  1804  wrote  about  money, 
"to  buy  me  comforts  for  my  voyage,  etc.,  Dante  and  a  dictionary." 
But  when  they  tried  to  interest  the  public  in  him  their  praise  fell 
upon  deaf  ears.  In  1809  Southey  wrote  of  his  "Kehama":  "Every 
generation  will  afford  me  some  half  dozen  admirers  of  it,  and  the 
everlasting  column  of  Dante's  fame  does  not  stand  upon  a  wider 
base."  This  was  four  years  after  Cary's  "Inferno."  But  in  181 8  a 
lecture  on  Cary's  translation  by  Coleridge,  and  an  article  in  The 
Edinburgh  Review  by  Ugo  Foscolo  and  Mackintosh  suddenly 
created  a  public.  Coleridge's  lecture,  according  to  his  son,  led  to 
the  immediate  sale  of  a  thousand  copies.  Five  years  earlier  neither 
lecture  nor  article  would  probably  have  wakened  any  response;  but 
now  the  reading  world  was  becoming  interested  in  all  things  Italian. 
In  that  same  year  (181 8)  appeared  Peacock's  "Nightmare  Abbey," 
in  which  the  fashionable  Mr.  Listless  says:  "I  don't  know  how  it  is, 
but  Dante  never  came  in  my  way  till  lately.  I  never  had  him  in  my 
collection,  and  if  I  had  had  him  I  should  not  have  read  him.  But  I 
find  he  is  growing  fashionable,  and  I  am  afraid  I  must  read  him 
some  wet  morning."  The  next  year  Cary's  version  went  into  a  second 
edition.  In  1824  Wordsworth,  who  was  no  great  admirer  of  the 
gloomy  Florentine,  wrote  rather  peevishly:  "It  has  become  lately — 
owing  a  good  deal,  I  believe,  to  the  example  of  Schlegel — the  fashion 
to  extol  him  above  measure."  After  this  the  vogue  of  "The  Divine 
Comedy"  was  assured;  but  it  started  as  part  of  the  general  Italian 
wave,  and  before  that  wave  arose  the  best  critics  in  Europe  could 
not  force  Dante  down  the  Anglo-Saxon  throat. 

[  222  ] 


THE  EXPATRIATED  POETS 

This  vogue  had  two  roots.  One  was  in  England,  represented  by 
Gary,  Leigh  Hunt,  author  of  "The  Story  of  Rimini,"  Coleridge,  and 
the  English  translations  of  Schlegel  mentioned  by  Wordsworth. 
The  other  root  was  in  Italy,  found  in  the  Dante  imitations  of  Byron 
and  Shelley.  With  the  exception  of  Hunt's  "Rimini,"  practically 
every  imitation  of  Dante  before  1830  was  written  in  Dante's 
country.  It  was  suggested  to  the  imitator  neither  by  Gary's  render- 
ing nor  by  Schlegel's  exegesis,  but  by  the  love  of  the  Italian  people 
for  their  great  poet.  "Why  they  talk  Dante — write  Dante — and 
think  and  dream  Dante  at  this  moment,"  wrote  Byron  from  among 
them  in  1821,  "to  an  excess,  which  would  be  ridiculous,  but  that  he 
deserves  it."  And  he  adds,  anticipating  Garlyle  by  two  decades, 
"There  is  a  gentleness  in  Dante  beyond  all  gentleness."  "I  pass  each 
day  where  Dante's  bones  are  laid,"  he  tells  us  in  "Don  Juan." 
Byron's  well-meant  though  unsuccessful  "Prophecy  of  Dante,"  in 
terza  rima,  was  largely  inspired  by  his  Italian  mistress,  the  Gountess 
Guiccioli,  who  is  said  to  have  known  "The  Divine  Gomedy"  by 
heart.  His  rides  through  Ravenna's  "immemorial  wood"  accounted 
for  his  rather  inadequate  translation  of  the  Francesca  of  Rimini 
episode.  Such  was  the  fascination  of  the  threefold  rhyme  that  he 
spoke  of  the  "Prophecy"  as  his  best  work,  and  thought  that  the 
terza  rima  might  have  affected  the  metre  of  the  fourth  canto  in 
"Ghilde  Harold,"  making  the  stanzas  run  into  each  other.  Among 
those  stanzas  there  is  one,  written,  not  in  England,  but  beside  the 
great  foreign  dead  of  Santa  Groce: 

Ungrateful  Florence!  Dante  sleeps  afar, 
Like  Scipio,  buried  by  the  upbraiding  shore. 

Dante  had  apparently  become  Byron's  great  world  poet.  In  the 
Preface  to  "Gain"  he  said:  "Since  I  was  twenty  I  have  never  read 
Milton":  and  Moore  said  that  Byron  "expressed  to  R[ogers]  the 
same  contempt  for  Shakespeare  he  has  so  often  expressed  to  me." 

That  Shelley  voiced  to  Medwin  his  dissatisfaction  with  all  trans- 
lations of  Dante  even  Gary's;  that  he  planned  to  render  the  whole 
"Divine  Gomedy"  into  English  terza  rima;  and  that  he  actually 
wrote  a  few  lines  of  the  intended  work  is  evidence  enough  that  his 

[  223  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

inspiration  came  from  life  in  Italy  not  from  volumes  in  England. 
His  poems  in  Dante's  metre  and  with  an  obvious  attempt  at  the 
great  poet's  manner  are  of  considerable  bulk  and  high  in  quality, 
even  if  they  are  a  hybrid  product  that  is  often  not  very  much  like 
the  grim  master  of  Tuscan  song.  The  first  of  these  is  the  unfinished 
"Prince  Athanase,"  which  in  its  pureminded  but  rather  morbid  self- 
analysis  has  more  kinship  with  Byron's  narratives  or  De  Musset's 
"Namouna"  than  with  the  repentant  but  militant  pilgrim  through 
Purgatory.  His  famous  "Ode  to  the  West  Wind"  was  mostly  written 
in  a  wood  by  the  Arno  near  Florence,  near  Dante's  city;  and  there 
for  once  an  Englishman  drew  a  natural  and  compelling  music  from 
the  foreign  metre.  In  the  brief  "Tower  of  Famine,"  "The  Woodman 
and  the  Nightingale,"  and  "Matilda  Gathering  Flowers"  the  hand 
seems  less  practiced  on  the  alien  instrument.  In  Shelley's  last,  and 
incomplete,  long  poem,  "The  Triumph  of  Life,"  there  is,  however,  a 
glory  and  an  impetus  of  vision  that,  if  not  that  of  Dante,  is  certainly 
that  of  poetry. 

Swift  as  a  spirit  hastening  to  his  task 

Of  glory  and  of  good,  the  Sun  sprang  forth 

Rejoicing  in  his  splendor,  and  the  mask 

Of  darkness  fell  from  the  awakened  Earth — 
The  smokeless  altars  of  the  mountain  snows 
Flamed  above  crimson  clouds,  and  at  the  birth 

Of  light,  the  Ocean's  orison  arose. 

The  poem  is  confusing  and  incoherent  in  places,  dream  within 
dream,  with  the  fluid  obscurity  of  the  German  Romantiker  not  the 
overcompressed  obscurity  of  Dante;  yet  Shelley's  vision  at  times 
grows  curiously  like  the  older  and  greater  one: 

And  then  he  pointed  to  a  company. 

Midst  whom  I  quickly  recognized  the  heirs 

Of  Caesar's  crime,  from  him  to  Constantine; 

The  anarch  chiefs,  whose  force  and  murderous  snares 

Had  founded  many  a  sceptre-bearing  line. 
[  224  ] 


THE  EXPATRIATED  POETS 

This  is  the  most  Italian  of  all  Shelley's  poems.  Not  only  is  it  in 
Dante's  metre  and  with  several  verbal  echoes  of  that  poet,  but  the 
subject-matter  is  largely  from  Petrarch's  "Trionfi,"  six  poems  in 
terza  rima,  and  especially  from  the  first,  "The  Triumph  of  Love 
over  Man."  It  is  the  work  of  a  half-Italianized  English  poet,  the 
Shelley  who  wrote:  "There  is  one  solitary  spot  among  those  aisles, 
behind  the  altar,  where  the  light  of  day  is  dim  and  yellow,  under 
the  storied  window,  which  I  have  chosen  to  visit,  and  read  Dante 
there."  And  again:  "His  apotheosis  of  Beatrice  in  Paradise  and  the 
gradations  of  his  own  love  and  her  loveliness  ...  is  the  most 
glorious  imagination  of  modern  poetry." 

The  debt  of  Byron  and  Shelley  was  by  no  means  confined  to 
poems  in  Italian  metres.  In  1817  Byron  visited  Ferrara,  saw  the 
original  MSS.  of  Tasso's  "Gierusalemme,"  and  the  cell  in  which  he 
was  confined.  That  visit  called  out  "The  Lament  of  Tasso,"  and 
also  the  briefer  but  better  lines  in  "Childe  Harold." 

Ferrara,  in  thy  wide  and  grass-grown  streets. 
Whose  symmetry  was  not  for  solitude. 
There  seems  as  'twere  a  curse  upon  the  seats 
Of  former  sovereigns,  and  the  antique  brood 
Of  Este,  which  for  many  an  age  made  good 
Its  strength  within  thy  walls,  and  was  of  yore 
Patron  or  tyrant,  as  the  changing  mood 
Of  petty  power  impell'd,  of  those  who  wore 
The  wreath  which  Dante's  brow  alone  had  worn  before. 

And  Tasso  is  their  glory  and  their  shame: 
Hark  to  his  strain  and  then  survey  his  cell. 

"The  Lament  of  Tasso,"  though  not  very  successful,  is  a  dramatic 
monologue;  and  one  cannot  help  noticing  how  much  this  t)rpe  and 
the  closely  related  brief  dialogue  have  been  fostered  by  Italian  in- 
fluence. The  best  of  Browning's  "Dramatic  Monologues"  and 
Landor's  "Imaginary  Conversations"  were  written  in  Italy.  "Barry 
Cornwall's"  "Dramatic  Scenes"  were  obviously  composed  under 
influence  from  that  country. 

The  fourth  canto  of  "Childe  Harold"  is  a  splendid  panorama  of 

[    225    ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

Italy:  Venice,  "rising  with  her  tiara  of  proud  towers";  "blue  Friuli's 
mountains";  the  "tomb  in  Arqua; — reared  in  air";  "the  fair  white 
walls"  of  Florence;  Clitumnus,  with  its  "grassy  banks  whereon  the 
milk-white  steer  Grazes";  "the  fall  of  waters"  at  Velino;  and  Rome, 
the  "lone  mother  of  dead  empires."  The  "deep  and  dark  blue  Ocean" 
of  the  magnificent  closing  address  is  the  Mediterranean,  the  battle- 
ground of  Roman  and  Venetian  navies. 

Thy  shores  are  empires,  changed  in  all  save  thee — 
Assyria,  Greece,  Rome,  Carthage,  what  are  they? 

More  than  that,  the  poem  is  the  work  of  a  man  who  has  repudiated 
his  native  country,  and  who,  at  times  at  least,  feels  toward  Italy  like 
an  adopted  son,  as  when  he  voiced  his  own  mood  through  his  para- 
phrase of  Filicaja: 

Italia!  oh,  Italia!  thou  who  hast 
The  fatal  gift  of  beauty,  which  became 
A  funeral  dower  of  present  woes  and  past, 
On  thy  sweet  brow  is  sorrow  plough'd  by  shame. 
And  annals  graved  in  characters  of  flame. 
Oh,  God!  that  thou  wert  in  thy  nakedness 
Less  lovely  or  more  powerful,  and  couldst  claim 
Thy  right,  and  awe  the  robbers  back,  who  press 
To  shed  thy  blood  and  drink  the  tears  of  thy  distress. 

The  year  after  this  was  printed  Byron  wrote  to  Murray:  "I  am  sure 
my  bones  would  not  rest  in  an  English  grave,  or  my  clay  mix  with 
the  earth  of  that  country." 

Among  minor  effects,  one  cannot  help  wondering  if  the  soft 
Mediterranean  landscape  did  not  show  itself  in  the  tropical  descrip- 
tions of  "The  Island,"  which  was  dated  at  Genoa. 

And  sweetly  now  those  untaught  melodies 
Broke  the  luxurious  silence  of  the  skies. 
The  sweet  siesta  of  a  summer  day. 
The  tropic  afternoon  of  Toobonai, 
Where  every  flower  was  bloom,  and  air  was  balm, 
And  the  first  breath  began  to  stir  the  palm.  .  .  . 
[  226  ] 


THE  EXPATRIATED  POETS 

There  sat  the  gentle  savage  of  the  wild, 
In  growth  a  woman,  though  in  years  a  child, 
As  childhood  dates  within  our  colder  clime 
Where  naught  is  ripen 'd  rapidly  save  crime. 

Byron's  dramas,  with  the  exception  of  "Manfred,"  were  wholly 
conceived  and  executed  in  Italy.  Two  of  them,  "Marino  Faliero" 
and  "The  Two  Foscari,"  are  founded  on  Venetian  history,  and  in 
the  Preface  to  the  former  Byron  wrote:  "Every  thing  about  Venice 
is,  or  was,  extraordinary — her  aspect  is  like  a  dream,  and  her  his- 
tory is  like  a  romance."  Part  of  "The  Deformed  Transformed"  is 
at  medieval  Rome.  It  was  while  in  Italy  that  Byron  developed  his 
perverse  though  by  no  means  wholly  mistaken  theory  of  dramatic 
art,  which  was  that  of  a  modified  and  rejuvenated  neo-classicism. 
This  theory  was  obviously  encouraged  by  the  Pope-Bowles  Contro- 
versy, then  raging  on  the  ink-stained  fields  of  England; — but  we 
cannot  help  asking  if  it  did  not  owe  something  also  to  Alfieri,  the 
neo-classic  dramatist  of  modern  Italy.  "Childe  Harold"  includes 
Alfieri  with  Michael  Angelo,  Galileo,  and  Machiavelli  among  the 
mighty  dead  of  Santa  Croce;  and  Shelley  wrote  home  in  1821  that 
Byron  "is  occupied  in  forming  a  new  drama,  and,  with  views  which 
I  doubt  not  will  expand  as  he  proceeds,  is  determined  to  write  a 
series  of  plays,  in  which  he  will  follow  the  French  tragedians  and 
Alfieri,  rather  than  those  of  England  and  Spain."  Shelley  added  very 
truly,  "This  seems  to  me  the  wrong  road."  "Manfred,"  which  was 
written  before  the  author  fell  into  this  doctrinaire  mood,  is  worth 
all  the  later  dramas  put  together.  The  critical  theories  preached  in 
the  Prefaces  to  these  are  faint  Drydenic  echoes,  nothing  more.  In 
Byron's  letters,  however,  we  find  evidence  that  he  was  darkly  grop- 
ing toward  truths  which  the  later  experience  of  the  theater  has 
emphasized.  The  writing  of  a  great  tragedy  "is  not  to  be  done  by 
following  the  old  dramatists,  who  are  full  of  gross  faults,  pardoned 
only  for  the  beauty  of  their  language."  "There  is  room  for  a  dif- 
ferent style  of  the  drama;  neither  a  servile  following  of  the  old 
drama,  which  is  a  grossly  erroneous  one,  nor  yet  too  French^  like 
those  who  succeeded  the  older  writers."  The  main  trouble  with 
Byron's  plays  was  neither  in  his  theories  nor  in  the  influences 

[  227  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

around  him,  but  in  the  utterly  undramatic  character  of  his  genius. 
"Manfred"  is  a  great  descriptive  poem  but  a  dramatic  monstrosity. 

Byron's  chief  debt  to  Italian  life  and  literature  is  that  they  helped 
him  to  find  himself  in  what  would  probably  have  been  his  best  vein 
had  he  lived.  There  had  been  from  boyhood  a  marked  dualism  in  his 
writings,  one-half  of  him  sardonic  and  realistic,  the  other  half  sen- 
timental and  romantic.  For  years,  like  the  damned  in  Milton's  hell, 
he  had  been  ferried  back  and  forth  between  the  fires  of  Werther 
and  the  icebergs  of  Racine.  This  dualism  may  have  been  partly  due 
to  the  mixture  of  English  and  Scotch  blood  in  him,  partly  to  the 
alternation  in  his  life  of  wild  adventure  and  conventional  society. 
The  satirical  Byron  was  naturally  the  greater;  but  as  long  as  he 
played  the  slavish  disciple  of  Queen  Anne  tradition  he  never  realized 
his  potentialities.  Berni  and  Pulci  supplied  him  with  a  weapon  fitted 
to  his  hand;  and  the  poetaster  of  the  "Hints  from  Horace"  became 
the  great,  mocking  misanthrope  of  "Don  Juan." 

Italy  evoked  from  Shelley  one  drama  worth  all  of  Byron's,  "The 
Cenci."  "On  my  arrival  at  Rome,"  wrote  Shelley  in  the  Preface, 
"I  found  that  the  story  of  the  Cenci  was  a  subject  not  to  be  men- 
tioned in  Italian  society  without  awakening  a  deep  and  breathless 
interest.  ...  All  ranks  of  people  knew  the  outlines  of  this  history, 
and  participated  in  the  overwhelming  interest  which  it  seems  to 
have  the  magic  of  exciting  in  the  human  heart.  .  .  .  This  national 
and  universal  interest  which  the  story  produces  and  has  produced 
for  two  centuries  and  among  all  ranks  of  people  in  a  great  city, 
where  the  imagination  is  kept  for  ever  active  and  awake,  first 
suggested  to  me  the  conception  of  its  fitness  for  a  dramatic  purpose." 
And  the  author  almost  makes  himself  an  interpreter  of  Italian, 
rather  than  a  creator  of  English  thought  when  he  adds:  "In  fact 
it  is  a  tragedy  which  has  already  received,  from  its  capacity  of 
awakening  and  sustaining  the  sympathy  of  men,  approbation  and 
success.  Nothing  remained  as  I  imagined,  but  to  clothe  it  to  the 
apprehensions  of  my  countrymen  in  such  language  and  action  as 
would  bring  it  home  to  their  hearts."  Turning  to  Shakespearean 
plays,  Shelley  compares  his,  not  to  the  transplanted  "Othello,"  but 
to  "Lear,"  written  on  English  ground  of  an  English  king  as  this  was 

[  228  ] 


THE  EXPATRIATED  POETS 

written  on  Italian  ground  of  an  Italian  family,  each  a  product  of 
the  country  over  which  its  terrible  tradition  had  brooded  for  cen- 
turies. The  religious  feeling  of  the  characters  is  Italian;  and  as  such 
the  author  has  to  explain  it  to  his  far-off  English  audience.  "Religion 
in  Italy  is  not,  as  in  Protestant  countries,  a  cloak  to  be  worn  on 
particular  days.  ...  It  is  interwoven  with  the  whole  fabric  of 
life.  ...  It  has  no  necessary  connection  with  any  one  virtue.  .  .  . 
Religion  pervades  intensely  the  whole  frame  of  society,  and  is  ac- 
cording to  the  temper  of  the  mind  which  it  inhabits,  a  passion,  a 
persuasion,  an  excuse,  a  refuge;  never  a  check."  The  language  of 
the  tragedy  is  full  of  echoes  from  Shakespeare,  especially  from 
"Macbeth";  but  the  mood,  the  atmosphere,  is  that  of  those  terrible 
confessions  poured  into  the  ear  of  Dante. 

The  "Prometheus  Unbound"  was  less  directly  a  product  of  the 
soil,  yet  it  probably  would  have  been  different  if  written  elsewhere. 
In  the  Note  on  it  Mrs.  Shelley  wrote  of  her  husband:  "The  charm 
of  the  Roman  climate  helped  to  clothe  his  thoughts  in  greater  beauty 
than  they  had  ever  worn  before.  And,  as  he  wandered  among  the 
ruins  made  one  with  Nature  in  their  decay,  or  gazed  on  the  Praxit- 
elean  shapes  that  throng  the  Vatican,  the  Capitol,  and  the  palaces 
of  Rome,  his  soul  imbibed  forms  of  loveliness  which  became  a  por- 
tion of  itself.  There  are  many  passages  in  the  Trometheus,'  which 
show  the  intense  delight  he  received  from  such  studies,  and  give 
back  the  impression  with  a  beauty  of  poetical  description  pecu- 
liarly his  own."  Shelley  himself  put  it  even  more  strongly:  "The 
blue  sky  of  Rome  and  tiie  effect  of  the  vigorous  awakening  of  spring 
in  that  divinest  climate,  and  the  new  life  with  which  it  drenches  the 
spirits  even  to  intoxication,  were  the  inspiration  of  this  drama." 

With  the  exception  of  "Ozymandias"  and  the  "Hymn  to  Intel- 
lectual Beauty,"  every  one  of  Shelley's  greatest  short  poems  origi- 
nated south  of  the  Alps.  The  "Lines  Among  the  Euganean  Hills" 
"was  written  after  a  day's  excursion  among  those  lovely  moun- 
tains"; and  the  introductory  verses  "image  forth  the  sudden  relief 
of  a  state  of  deep  despondency  by  the  radiant  visions  disclosed  by 
the  sudden  burst  of  an  Italian  sunrise  in  autumn  on  the  highest 

[  229  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

peak  of  those  delightful  mountains."  It  was  over  the  Apennine  that 
the  cloud  cried: 

I  sift  the  snow  on  the  mountains  below, 
And  their  great  pines  groan  aghast. 

It  was  through  the  pure  air  of  Italy  that  his  skylark  sang  "from 
heaven  or  near  it."  It  was  in  the  same  climate,  not  in  foggy  England, 
that  he  composed  the  "Hymn  of  Apollo": 

The  sunbeams  are  my  shafts,  with  which  I  kill 
Deceit,  that  loves  the  night  and  fears  the  day; 

and  also  the  "Lines  Written  in  the  Bay  of  Lerici": 

When  the  moon  had  ceased  to  climb 
The  azure  path  of  Heaven's  steep. 
And  like  an  albatross  asleep 
Balanced  on  her  wings  of  light. 
Hovered  in  the  purple  night. 

In  the  "Ode  to  Naples"  he  tells  us  that  the  ancient  sculptures  of 
Pompeii 

Seemed  only  not  to  move  and  grow 
Because  the  crystal  silence  of  the  air 
Weighed  on  their  life. 

The  Italian  nature  of  many  more  perishable  poems  is  shown  by 
their  bare  titles:  "Marenghi,"  "Fiordispina,"  "Ginevra."  One  of  the 
best,  "Epipsychidion,"  is  prefaced  by  an  almost  literal  translation 
from  Dante;  and  we  cannot  help  believing  that  Shelley's  idealiza- 
tion of  poor  Emilia  Viviani  is  an  attempt  to  follow  in  Dante's  foot- 
steps, by  making  a  very  human  female  the  symbol  of  eternal  truth. 
In  182 1  Shelley  wrote  to  the  idealized  or  allegorized  Emilia: 

Seraph  of  Heaven!  too  gentle  to  be  human. 
Veiling  beneath  that  radiant  form  of  Woman 
All  that  is  insupportable  in  thee 
Of  light,  and  love,  and  immortality! 
Sweet  Benediction  in  the  eternal  curse! 
Veiled  Glory  of  this  lampless  Universe! 

[  230  ] 


THE  EXPATRIATED  POETS 

In  October  of  that  same  year  Shelley  told  John  Gisborne:  "The 
Epipsychidion  is  a  mystery;  as  to  real  flesh  and  blood,  you  know 
that  I  do  not  deal  in  those  articles";  and  concerning  the  "real  flesh 
and  blood"  Mary  Shelley  wrote:  "Emilia  has  married  Biondi;  we 
hear  that  she  leads  him  and  his  mother  (to  use  a  vulgarism)  a  devil 
of  a  life."  "Epipsychidion"  is  like  its  own  description  of  the  moon, 
a  "shrine  of  soft  yet  icy  flame,"  that  "warms  not  but  illumines" 
like  the  cold  starry  fervor  of  the  "Paradiso."  Emilia  was  its  orna- 
mented image  of  the  Virgin,  a  symbol  to  kneel  before,  not  the  true 
object  of  adoration. 

Any  one  wishing  to  study  the  effect  of  landscape  on  poetry  might 
profitably  compare  the  opening  lines  of  Crabbers  "Village"  with 
those  of  Shelley's  "Julian  and  Maddalo."  There  are  certain  common 
elements  in  both.  In  Lincolnshire 

A  length  of  burning  sand  appears, 
Where  the  thin  harvest  waves  its  withered  ears; 
Rank  weeds,  that  every  art  and  care  defy,  etc. 

At  Venice  we  are  shown 

a  bare  strand 
Of  hillocks,  heaped  from  ever  shifting  sand. 
Matted  with  thistles  and  amphibious  weeds. 

But  by  the  North  Sea, 

With  mingled  tints  the  rocky  coasts  abound, 
And  a  sad  splendour  vainly  shines  around; 

and  by  the  Adriatic, 

How  beautiful  is  sunset,  when  the  glow 

Of  Heaven  descends  upon  a  land  like  thee, 

Thou  paradise  of  exiles,  Italy! 

Thy  mountains,  seas  and  vineyards  and  the  towers 

Of  cities  they  encircle! — ^it  was  ours 

To  stand  on  thee,  beholding  it. 

Mary  Shelley,  back  in  England  in  1824,  seemed  to  feel  that  she  had 
exchanged  the  land  of  poetry  for  one  of  prose.  "What  a  divine  place 

[  231  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

Italy  is!  It  seems  to  mature  all  gentle  feelings,  and  to  warm  with 
peculiar  sensibility  an  affectionate  heart;  its  winds  whisper  a  thou- 
sand expressions  of  kindness — clouds  vanish  from  the  mind  as  from 
the  sky.  Here,  methinks  a  cold  rain  falls  upon  the  feelings,  and 
quenches  the  living  spark  that  was  lighted  there."  Hunt  said  of 
Genoa:  "You  learn  for  the  first  time  in  this  climate,  what  colors 
really  are.  No  wonder  it  produces  painters.  An  English  artist  of  any 
enthusiasm  might  shed  tears  of  vexation,  to  think  of  the  dull  medium 
through  which  blue  and  red  come  to  him  in  his  own  atmosphere, 
compared  with  this.'^ 

The  personal  relations  of  Byron  and  Shelley  while  in  Italy  were 
at  times  cordial  and  at  times  distant,  the  feelings  of  Shelley  running 
through  those  painful  vicissitudes  which  might  be  expected  in  the 
presence  of  a  great  genius  but  a  morbidly  vicious  man.  Their  in- 
fluence on  each  other's  poetry  was  probably  less  than  had  been  the 
case  during  their  previous  brief  acquaintanceship  in  Switzerland. 
At  that  time  they  had  both  been  more  young  and  impressionable; 
and  Byron  had  not  yet  in  the  cloaca  maxima  of  Venetian  vice  ac- 
quired habits  which  made  even  his  fellow  poet  look  askance.  The 
"Prometheus,"  if  it  owed  some  of  its  revolutionary  Titanism  to 
Byron,  owed  a  debt  contracted  years  back  before  "The  Revolt  of 
Islam"  was  written.  It  is  obvious  that  Byron  succeeded  only  in 
following  the  mocking  side  of  Italian  literature,  Shelley  only  in 
following  the  serious  one.  The  moods  produced  by  landscape  and 
ruin  were  naturally  more  similar.  Shelley  wrote  of  Rome  in  language 
that  immediately  suggests  "Childe  Harold."  "Rome  is  a  city,  as  it 
were,  of  the  dead,  or  rather  of  those  who  cannot  die,  and  who  sur- 
vive the  puny  generations  which  inhabit  and  pass  over  the  spot 
which  they  have  made  sacred  to  eternity."  But  such  common  moods 
very  rarely  found  expression  in  the  verse  of  both  poets. 

In  1822  Leigh  Hunt  came  to  Italy  to  cooperate  with  Byron  and 
Shelley  in  producing  a  new  magazine.  The  Liberal.  The  death  of 
Shelley  almost  immediately  after  Hunt's  arrival,  and  the  collapse 
of  Byron's  interest  made  the  periodical  doomed  from  the  start. 
Only  four  numbers  of  it  appeared;  but  during  its  brief  life  it  became 
a  channel  for  pouring  Italian  translations  and  imitations  into  Eng- 

[  232  ] 


THE  EXPATRIATED  POETS 

land,  translations  and  imitations  which  the  English  public  rejected 
as  undesirable  immigrants.  Byron's  part  included  the  translation 
of  Pulci's  "Morgante  Maggiore,"  Canto  I,  and  the  great  but  ill-timed 
"Vision  of  Judgment"  which  in  the  words  of  Hunt,  "played  the 
devil  with  all  of  us."  The  rest  of  the  Italian  element  in  The  Liberal 
had  no  great  intrinsic  value,  but  considerable  bulk.  Hunt  wrote  two 
satires,  "The  Dogs"  and  "The  Book  of  Beginners,"  in  metre  and 
mood  washed-out  imitations  of  "Don  Juan"  and  "Beppo."  "The 
Florentine  Lovers"  was  not  great,  nor  was  Mrs.  Shelley's  "Giovanni 
Villani."  Several  unidentified  translations  from  Alfieri  were  included 
among  the  verse.  The  Liberal  was  a  straw  showing  which  way  the 
wind  blew;  but  the  wind  passed  over  it  and  it  was  gone. 

Hunt  remained  in  Italy  three  years,  and  so  had  an  opportunity 
to  increase  his  knowledge  of  Italian  literature  and  sympathy  for  it. 
This  counted  much  later  (in  1846)  when  he  published  his  "Stories 
from  the  Italian  Poets,"  containing  prose  summaries  or  loose  ren- 
derings of  "The  Divine  Comedy"  and  of  poems  by  Ariosto,  Boiardo, 
Pulci,  and  Tasso,  with  comments,  critical  notices,  and  occasional 
passages  versified.  Much  earlier  than  that  he  wrote  his  best  drama, 
"The  Legend  of  Florence,"  based  on  a  romance  of  real  life  in  an 
Italian  periodical.  After  his  return  from  Italy  also  Hunt  extensively 
revised  his  "Story  of  Rimini"  and  freed  the  landscape  descriptions 
"from  northern  inconsistencies."  All  that  lies  beyond  the  period 
which  we  are  studying,  but  helps  to  show  the  directions  in  which 
literary  currents  were  turning.  Incidentally,  on  his  voyage  to  the 
Mediterranean  in  1822  Hunt's  chief  reading,  besides  "Don 
Quixote,"  was  in  Ariosto  and  Berni. 

The  isolated  figure  of  Walter  Savage  Landor  hardly  belongs  to  a 
discussion  of  literary  currents  and  eddies.  They  broke  around  his 
self-sufficient  and  unbending  personality  like  swirling  tides  around 
a  bowlder.  Yet  even  he  was  not  left  wholly  unaffected.  At  first, 
indeed,  it  would  seem  as  if  he  were  a  central  figure  in  the  Italian 
stream.  He  lived  in  Italy  continuously  from  181 5  to  1832.  He 
wrote  about  several  famous  people  of  that  country.  Memories  of 
him  mingle  for  the  tourist  with  those  of  Byron,  Shelley,  and  Hunt 
at  Pisa,  with  those  of  Dante  and  Boccaccio  at  Florence.  In  the 

[  233  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

country  of  ancient  Rome  he  proved  himself  the  most  Roman  of 
English  authors.  But  when  we  ask  ourselves,  would  he  have  written 
differently  elsewhere  we  are  by  no  means  as  sure  of  an  affirmative 
answer  as  in  the  case  of  the  other  expatriated  poets. 

Not  love  but  necessity  brought  him  to  Dante's  country.  During 
his  first  year  of  residence  there  his  brother  wrote:  "He  has  seen 
nothing  of  Italy,  and  yet  he  swears  that  it  contains  nothing  worth 
seeing."  By  1823  he  felt  more  kindly  and  said,  "Italy  and  Greece 
are  the  only  countries  which  I  would  pay  a  postilion  eighteen  pence 
to  see";  but  he  never  waxes  as  enthusiastic  over  Italian  landscape 
or  literature  as  Shelley  did.  There  is  no  niche  for  him  in  the  Dante 
movement.  "Some  time  or  other,"  he  says,  "I  propose  to  finish 
Dante,  which  I  began  about  eleven  years  ago,  but  wanted  perse- 
verance. A  twentieth  or  thirtieth  part  of  what  I  read  was  excellent." 
On  Tasso  he  was  even  more  severe.  He  had  moderate  admiration 
for  Ariosto,  who  "is  a  Carnival  poet,"  but  "is  never  very  bad,"  and 
enthusiasm  enough  for  Boccaccio,  "the  greatest  genius  of  Italy,  or 
the  continent."  Also  he  was  an  admirer  of  Alfieri. 

He  had  practically  no  connection,  literary  or  personal,  with  the 
other  expatriated  authors.  Shelley  and  Byron  he  never  became 
acquainted  with,  though  the  former  was  living  in  Pisa  when  he  was, 
and  the  latter  came  there  only  one  month  after  his  departure.  Hunt 
and  Hazlitt  called  on  him,  and  were  cordially  received,  but  became 
no  part  of  his  life.  Contrary  to  all  natural  expectations,  the  chief 
influence  exercised  on  him  was  that  of  Southey,  with  whom  he 
maintained  for  years  an  intimate  correspondence.  It  is  a  question  if 
he  would  have  written  his  "Imaginary  Conversations,"  though  he 
had  made  some  abortive  attempts  in  the  same  line  years  before,  had 
he  not  been  fired  by  the  fact  that  Southey  was  composing  dialogues. 
"I  wish  to  God  I  could  exchange  the  Lake  of  Como  for  the  Lake 
of  Keswick,  just  one  evening,"  he  wrote.  When  we  add  to  this  his 
glowing  appreciation  of  Wordsworth,  "In  thoughts,  feelings,  and 
images  not  one  amongst  the  ancients  equals  him,"  we  are  half 
tempted  to  consider  Landor  as  the  foreign  legion  of  the  Lakers'  army. 
To  realize  that  he  was  not  one  of  an  English  poetical  school  in  Tus- 
cany, we  need  only  read  Wordsworth's  letter  to  him:  "It  is  reported 

[  234  ] 


THE  EXPATRIATED  POETS 

here  that  Byron,  Shelley,  Moore,  and  Leigh  Hunt  (I  do  not  know  if 
you  have  heard  of  all  these  names)  are  to  lay  their  heads  together  in 
some  town  of  Italy  for  the  purpose  of  conducting  a  journal  to  be 
directed  against  everything  in  religion,  in  morals,  and  probably  in 
government  and  literature,  which  our  forefathers  have  been  accus- 
tomed to  reverence."  Landor  always  had  a  marked  antipathy  toward 
Byron,  and  at  first  toward  Shelley,  though  this  changed  into  gen- 
uine admiration  after  the  latter's  death.  Of  the  dying  Keats  he 
naturally  saw  nothing.  His  own  proudly  defiant  words,  "What  I 
write  is  not  written  on  slate,  and  no  finger,  not  of  Time  himself,  who 
dips  it  in  the  clouds  of  years,  can  efface  it,"  is  in  dramatic  contrast 
with  the  tragic  inscription  on  the  boy  poet^s  humble  headstone  in 
the  cemetery  of  Caius  Cestius. 

None  the  less  from  1821  to  1829  Landor  was  living  in  or  near 
Florence,  near  the  "mighty  dust"  of  Santa  Croce;  and  there  during 
those  years  he  wrote  about  one  hundred  "Imaginary  Conversa- 
tions," most  of  which  were  published  in  England  within  that  period. 
They  deal  with  all  ages,  ancient  or  modern,  with  Greece,  Rome, 
Italy,  England,  France,  Russia,  and  the  Iberian  peninsula.  Whether 
Landor  owed  much  or  little  to  his  Italian  environment,  his  conti- 
nental life  must  have  aided  him  in  preparing  for  this  vast  sweep, 
which  reminds  us  of  Hugo's  "Legend  of  the  Centuries."  And,  what- 
ever the  cause,  we  must  remember  that,  like  Byron  and  Shelley,  he 
first  found  himself,  first  produced  his  greatest  and  most  character- 
istic work  on  Italian  ground.  What  he  might  have  done  in  England 
we  know  not;  but  he  lived  there  until  he  was  thirty-nine  and  pro- 
duced nothing  save  unreadable  conglomerations  of  magnificent 
verse  passages.  One  of  Landor's  Conversations  closes  with  a 
denial  that  climate  affects  genius.  The  climate  of  Austria  is  tem- 
perate and  regular,  but  where  are  her  great  men?  Florence  where 
Landor  did  his  best  work  has  fogs  in  winter  and  stifling  heat  in 
summer,  yet  her  men  of  genius  are  legion.  "A  town  so  little  that 
the  voice  of  a  cabbage-girl  in  the  midst  of  it  may  be  heard  at  the 
extremities,  reared  within  three  centuries  a  greater  number  of  citi- 
zens illustrious  for  their  genius  than  all  the  remainder  of  the 
Continent  (excepting  her  sister  Athens)  in  six  thousand  years." 

[  235  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

All  of  which  seems  to  us  very  bad  logic.  Climate  is  only  one  force 
out  of  many  in  a  writer's  environment;  and  as  far  as  it  counts,  the 
obvious  conclusion  would  be  that  a  variable  climate  like  that  of 
Florence  is  more  conducive  to  genius  than  a  mild  and  equable  one, 
a  theory  which  has  recently  been  advanced  by  certain  scientists. 

But  we  are  growing  too  theoretical  and  scientific.  To  return  to 
literature,  which  after  all  is  the  gift  of  God,  and  not  of  the  Weather 
Bureau.  Besides  his  prose  masterpieces,  Landor  wrote  at  this  time 
a  number  of  those  masterly  short  lyrics  which  were  published  much 
later.  They  are  as  condensed  as  Tacitus,  as  vivid  as  "Livy's  pictured 
page,"  Roman  in  the  land  of  Rome. 

My  hopes  retire;  my  wishes  as  before 
Struggle  to  find  their  resting-place  in  vain: 
The  ebbing  sea  thus  beats  against  the  shore; 
The  shore  repels  it;  it  returns  again. 

It  was  in  Italy  that  Landor  definitely  abandoned  Latin  for  English 
as  the  medium  of  his  shorter  poems.  An  esthetic  aristocrat,  he  may 
have  wished  for  them  a  language  unprofaned  by  landlords,  butchers, 
slanderers,  or  political  orators;  and  in  a  foreign  country  English 
became  such  a  language.  In  Great  Britain  it  was  the  common  pave- 
ment for  every  one  to  tread;  at  Florence  it  was  the  reserved  space 
behind  the  altar  rail.  Certain  it  is  that  the  best  poetry  and  prose  of 
Landor  was  produced  by  a  man  no  longer  a  spiritual  citizen  of  his 
fatherland.  "My  country  now  is  Italy,  where  I  have  a  residence 
for  life,"  he  declared;  and  "nothing  but  the  education  and  settle- 
ment of  my  children  would  make  me  at  all  desirous  of  seeing 
England  again." 

The  Italian  tendency  in  English  literature  ran  parallel  to  a  similar 
and  exactly  contemporary  one  in  Germany.  It  was  part  of  an  inter- 
national wave.  Ricarda  Huch  tells  us  that  among  the  Germans 
"Italy  was  frequently  visited,  and  but  few  of  the  romanticists  did 
not  learn  to  know  it.  .  .  .  The  romantic  painters  felt  at  once  the 
attractive  power  of  the  Romish  Church  and  the  dimly  anticipated 
rapture  of  the  South.  .  .  .  Before  the  first  pictures  of  Bellini  and 
Giotto,  which  Jonas  Veit  saw,  he  felt  as  if  he  must  melt  into  tears 

[  236  ] 


THE  EXPATRIATED  POETS 

or  die  of  bliss.  For  the  classical  poets,  Lessing,  Schiller,  Goethe, 
Italy  was  also  the  land  of  longing;  but  at  the  same  time  their  feeling 
had  not  the  romantic  character,  precisely  because  the  pilgrimage 
to  the  Church  was  lacking.  For  them  Italy  was  the  classical  land, 
where  the  author  developed  a  sense  of  measure  and  form,  refining 
and  toning  down  the  inborn  barbarousness  of  the  North.  On  the 
contrary  the  Romanticists  sought  in  Italy  the  nature  of  the  South 
as  exuberance,  abundance,  sensuous  rapture;  not  culture  but  frag- 
mentary culture,  the  return  to  savage  nature,  loosening  of  ties. 
Zacharias  Werner  declared  that  he  must  go  at  once  to  Italy,  'not 
to  work  there,  where  follies  were  plenty,  but  to  forget  himself  and 
everything  else  among  ruins  and  flowers.'  It  was  a  powerful  impulse 
like  that  of  man  toward  woman,  an  impulse  toward  intoxication, 
toward  freedom  from  measure  and  rule,  toward  beauty  in  its  wild 
state.  .  .  .  The  genuine  romantic  Italy  is  painted  by  Eichendorff: 
The  land  full  of  devastated  palaces,  full  of  gardens  grown  wild, 
where  marble  statues  lead  a  lonely,  enchanted  life,  where  nothing 
moves  but  ancient  fountains,  where  there  breathes  a  sultry  and 
intoxicating  perfume,  where  memory  and  the  past  move  among 
ruins,  where  dangerous  physical  attractions  everywhere  ensnare  the 
heart.  Of  modern  Italy  he  knew  little  more  than  that  it  was  the  land 
of  the  Pope,  the  throne  of  the  Church.  ...  In  another  of  Eichen- 
dorff's  prose  romances  a  young  man  enters  Rome  at  evening.  .  .  . 
'It  seemed  to  him  as  if  he  were  entering  into  a  splendid  fairy 
tale.'  .  .  .  We  gain  wholly  different  pictures  of  Italy  from  the  pens 
of  Ringseis,  Gorres,  Carus,  for  whom  Italy  also  possessed  a  special 
attraction.  .  .  .  Models  of  realistic-romantic  description  are  found 
in  the  journals  of  Carus  about  his  travels  in  Italy.  'Italy,  receive 
your  old  lover  kindly,'  he  cries,  touched  at  heart,  when  after  thirteen 
years  he  treads  again  the  threshold  of  the  land  of  beauty." 

The  English  and  German  authors  neither  met  nor  influenced  each 
other  perceptibly  in  Italy.  Their  differences  are  those  of  race,  their 
likenesses  due  to  a  common  environment.  Among  both  were  sown 
the  seeds  of  later  pre-Raphaelitism  in  art  and  literature.  Landor, 
says  Sidney  Colvin,  "anticipated  the  modern  predilection  for  the 
pre-Raphaelite  masters,  whose  pictures  were  then  in  no  demand." 

[  237  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

Both  nations  had  men  like  Goethe  and  Landor  who  strengthened 
from  Italian  inspiration  the  "classic"  sense  of  form.  Both  had 
writers  like  Shelley  and  Eichendorff  to  whom  Italy  was  a  glorious 
dreamland,  though  no  Englishman  in  this  field  became  so  visionary 
as  the  transcendental  Teuton.  After  the  fall  of  Napoleon,  from 
England,  from  Germany,  and  to  a  lesser  but  perceptible  degree, 
from  France,  poetry  followed  in  the  path  of  Alaric  and  pitched  its 
tent  on  the  plains  of  Lombardy  or  by  the  banks  of  the  Tiber. 


[  238  ] 


CHAPTER  XI 

Popular  Taste  and  Minor  Tendencies ^  1 8 1 5- 1 8 30 

The  popular  demand  for  new  books  of  poetry  during  the  first  decade 
of  the  nineteenth  century  was  considerable  and  apparently  increased, 
reached  its  maximum  during  the  first  half  of  the  second  decade,  and 
fell  off  rapidly  during  the  third.  The  popularity  of  Byron  was  partly 
due  to  the  fact  that  he  was  launched  on  the  rising  wave.  To  be  sure, 
he  was  one  of  the  chief  creators  of  it;  but  Scott,  Campbell,  and 
Moore  had  all  set  it  in  motion  before  him.  The  unpopularity  of 
Keats  and  Shelley,  though  inherent  in  the  nature  of  their  work,  was 
aided  by  the  fact  that  they  met  the  falling  tide  just  when  they 
should  have  emerged  from  obscurity.  Whatever  effect  great  wars 
have  or  do  not  have  on  the  poetry  of  a  nation,  the  general  demand 
for  verse  in  England  began  to  decline  not  long  after  Waterloo. 
Even  the  marked  intellectual  impetus  given  by  the  sudden  opening 
of  continental  Europe  could  not  keep  it  long  at  flood.  Sales  fell  off, 
and  if  taste  improved  within  a  chosen  circle  it  deteriorated  among 
the  reading  masses.  Before  181 6  the  popular  demand  had  been  for 
what  was  virile  and  second  rate,  "Marmion"  and  "The  Corsair." 
Afterward  its  languid  preference  was  given  to  the  prudish,  senti- 
mental, and  third  rate,  to  Mrs.  Hemans,  Letitia  Landon,  Mary 
Mitford,  the  "too  lovey"  verse  of  Procter,  or  at  best  to  Moore's 
"Lalla  Rookh,"  a  rather  effeminate  substitute  for  "The  Lay  of 
the  Last  Minstrel"  or  "The  Giaour."  "The  atmosphere  seems  no 
longer  the  same  as  when  it  was  weighed  down  and  rendered  heavy 
by  the  powerful  bad  angel  Napoleon,"  declared  a  Blackwood's 
contributor  regarding  literature;  but  the  change  to  which  he  testified 
was  by  no  means  an  unmixed  blessing. 

The  period  after  181 5  begins  with  Byron  in  the  height  of  his 

[  239  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

renown.  He  still,  according  to  Procter,  "in  1818  was  the  most  popu- 
lar poet  of  his  day";  but  the  widespread  excitement  against  him 
after  the  scandal  of  181 6  combined  with  the  foreign  and  misunder- 
stood character  of  his  later  works  to  push  him  from  his  throne. 
Blackwood's  in  1822  printed  a  facetious  rhymed  "Critique,"  which 
is  probably  a  fair  index  of  public  feeling  and  which  began: 

So  the  public  at  length  is  beginning  to  tire  on 
The  torrent  of  poesy  pour'd  by  Lord  Byron. 

His  kingdom  fell  to  pieces,  Moore  reigning  leisurely  over  the  larger 
fragment  of  it.  After  1820  the  popular  supremacy  in  literature 
reverted  to  Scott  in  his  character  as  novelist;  and  there  was  no 
longer  any  undisputed  monarch  of  poetry. 

"^  In  Scotland  the  reading  public  frankly  turned  its  back  on  verse 
and  demanded  prose.  In  181 7  Blackwood's  declared:  "Poetry  is  at 
present  experiencing  the  fickleness  of  fashion,  and  may  be  said  to 
have  had  its  day.  Very  recently,  the  reading  public,  as  the  phrase 
is,  was  immersed  in  poetry,  but  seems  to  have  had  enough."  In  Eng- 
land, while  the  reputation  of  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge  was  growing 
among  the  discerning  few,  the  majority  made  poetry  a  fad,  and 
produced  a  spurious  enthusiasm  almost  as  discouraging  to  genius 
as  the  outspoken  disapproval  north  of  the  Tweed.  The  reviewer  of 
Leigh  Hunt's  poems  in  The  London  Magazine  said  in  1820:  "We 
have,  probably,  at  this  time,  more  persons  who  make  the  admiration 
of  poetry  their  outward  boast,  and  fewer  who  make  the  love  of  it 
their  inward  happiness,  than  at  any  former  period  since  the  revival 
of  letters.  .  .  .  Poetry  is  the  reigning  belle  of  the  day — admired  by 
all,  and  loved  by  none." 

Contemporary  with  this  false  vogue  of  poetry  came  a  marked 
increase  in  the  number  of  minor  poets.  Southey  wrote  of  them  in 
1 818:  "They  are  become  marvelously  abundant  in  England;  so  that 
publications  which  twenty  years  ago  would  have  attracted  consider- 
able attention,  are  now  coming  from  the  press  in  shoals  unnoticed." 
Three  years  later  Wordsworth  said  rather  petulantly:  "As  to  poetry, 
I  am  sick  of  it;  it  overruns  the  country  in  all  the  shapes  of  the 
plagues  of  Egypt."  Blackwood's  in  1822  speaks  of  two  thousand 

[  240  ] 


POPULAR  TASTE  AND  MINOR  TENDENCIES 

very  respectable  poets  living  at  that  time,  and  a  few  months  later 
said:  ''The  land  is  overflowing  with  poetry  as  with  milk  and  honey." 
According  to  Lockhart,  when  Tom  Moore  visited  Scott  in  1825, 
"the  commonness  of  the  poetic  talent  in  these  days  was  alluded  to. 
'Hardly  a  Magazine  is  now  published/  said  Moore,  'that  does  not 
contain  verses  which  some  thirty  years  ago  would  have  made  a 
reputation.' — Scott  turned  with  his  look  of  shrewd  humor,  as  if 
chuckling  over  his  own  success,  and  said,  'Ecod,  we  were  in  the  luck 
of  it  to  come  before  these  fellows' ;  but  he  added,  playfully  flourish- 
ing his  stick  as  he  spoke,  'we  have,  like  Bobadil,  taught  them  to 
beat  us  with  our  own  weapons.'  "  "Poetry,  nay  good  poetry,  is  a 
drug  in  the  present  day,"  declared  Scott  later  in  the  same  year. 
Such  a  jungle  growth  of  pseudo-genius  could  not  fail  to  make  the 
recognition  of  true  genius  more  difficult;^ the  reader  who  had  already 
filled  his  bookshelves  with  the  lollypops  of  L.  E.  L.  and  the  exotics 
of  Milman  might  naturally  hesitate  before  adding  the  "Eve  of 
St.  Agnes." 

Meanwhile  the  most  unreasonable  and  unliterary  type  of  prudish- 
ness  was  rampant  everywhere.  Our  own  age  has  gone  so  far  to  the 
other  extreme  in  literature  that  it  is  a  profound  experience  to  study 
the  public  which  collided  with  Byron's  "Cain."  "The  reign  of  Cant 
in  England  is  growing  wider  and  stronger  each  day,"  wrote  Mary 
Shelley  in  disgust,  after  her  return  from  Italy.  ^^John  Bull  (the  news- 
paper) attacked  the  licenser  of  the  theaters  for  allowing  a  piece  to 
pass  with  improper  expressions;  so  the  next  farce  was  sent  back  to 
the  theater  with  a  note  from  the  licenser  to  say  that  in  the  farce  there 
were  nine  damns,  and  two  equivocal  words  which,  considering  what 
John  Bull  said,  he  could  not  permit  to  pass."  Lamb,  a  much  more 
unprejudiced  witness,  ascribed  the  failure  of  a  certain  play  partly 
to  the  fact  that  one  of  the  characters  was  a  fallen  woman,  "^  most 
unfortunate  ^oice  in  this  moral  day.  The  audience  were  as  scan- 
dalized as  if  you  were  to  introduce  such  a  person  to  their  private 
tea-tables."  Crofton  Croker  in  1828  wrote  regarding  the  popular 
failure  of  Lady  Morgan's  "O'Briens  and  O'Flaherties" :  "Colburn, 
I  hear,  swears  that  Jerdan's  having  discovered  it  was  an  improper 
book  for  ladies  to  read  has  cost  him  five  hundred  pounds."  In  the 

[  241  ] 


\ 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

prefatory  essay  to  his  1830  edition  of  Webster's  plays,  Dyce  com- 
ments on  the  coarse  language  of  Elizabethan  drama,  and  says  of 
his  own  day:  "But  the  public  taste  has  now  reached  the  highest 
pitch  of  refinement,  and  such  coarseness  is  tolerated  in  our  theaters 
no  more."  He  adds  suggestively  that  perhaps  "the  language  of  the 
stage  is  purified  in  proportion  as  our  morals  have  deteriorated." 

A  curious  evidence  of  the  change  in  attitude  between  the  mid- 
eighteenth  century  and  1820  is  given  in  Lockhart's  "Life  of  Scott." 
The  great  novelist  had  procured  for  a  grand-aunt  some  novels  of 
Aphra  Behn,  which  she  had  not  opened  for  decades.  "The  next 
time  I  saw  her  afterwards,"  wrote  Scott,  "she  gave  me  back  Aphra, 
properly  wrapped  up,  with  nearly  these  words:  'Take  back  your 
bonny  Mrs.  Behn;  and,  if  you  will  take  my  advice,  put  her  in  the 
fire,  for  I  found  it  impossible  to  get  through  the  very  first  novel. 
But  is  it  not,'  she  said,  'a  very  odd  thing  that  I,  an  old  woman  of 
eighty  and  upwards,  sitting  alone,  feel  myself  ashamed  to  read 
a  book  which,  sixty  years  ago,  I  have  heard  read  aloud  for  the 
amusement  of  large  circles,  consisting  of  the  first  and  most  credit- 
able society  in  London.'  This,  of  course,"  added  Sir  Walter,  "was 
owing  to  the  gradual  improvement  of  the  national  taste  and 
delicacy."  In  1823,  Scott,  one  of  the  purest-minded  men  in  Europe, 
was  compelled  by  his  publisher  to  recast  some  twenty- four  pages  of 
"St.  Ronan's  Well,"  lest  the  original  version  might  strike  the  chaste 
public  as  "improper." 

Perhaps  this  moral  attitude  had  something  to  do  with  a  minor 
literary  wave,  the  Hebraic.  This  was  an  offshoot  of  the  general 
Orientalizing  tendency,  but  fostered  by  the  Bible  and  the  pulpit,  as 
the  tales  of  Oriental  harems  were  not.  One  of  the  first  evidences  of  it 
was  "The  World  Before  the  Flood"  (1812)  by  that  most  excellent 
man,  that  once  rather  popular  and  to-day  rather  boresome  poet, 
James  Montgomery.  This  long  epic  has  some  flashes,  of  good  descrip- 
tion, but,  like  the  people  which  it  describes,  has  now  become  extinct. 
The  Hebraic  element  continues  in  the  author's  hymns,  some  of  which 
have  genuine  merit,  and  many  of  which  are  widely  used  by  American 
churches.  Byron's  "Hebrew  Melodies"  in  181 5  gave  added  popu- 
larity to  Scriptural  themes,  and  contained  at  least  one  masterly 

[  242  ] 


POPULAR  TASTE  AND  MINOR  TENDENCIES 

lyric,  however  insincere  they  may  ring  at  times.  In  his  later  Old 
Testament  dramas,  "Cain'*  and  "Heaven  and  Earth,"  Byron  must 
have  seemed  to  Bible  readers  like  Hassan  in  Moore's  "Fire-wor- 
shippers," brooding  over  the  sacred  Koran, 

Unblushing,  with  thy  Sacred  Book, 

Turning  the  leaves  with  blood-stained  hands, 
And  wresting  from  its  page  sublime 
His  creed  of  lust  and  hate  and  crime. 

In  the  same  year  with  "The  Hebrew  Melodies"  Joseph  Cottle,  that 
invaluable  weathercock  as  to  literary  tendencies,  published  his  un- 
readable "Messiah."  Not  many  months  later  came  the  "Sacred 
Songs"  of  Moore,  a  number  of  which  deal  rather  feebly  with  the  his- 
tory of  ancient  Israel,  but  contain  abundant  evidence  tiiat  the  author 
had  recently  reviewed  both  the  Bible  and  the  writings  of  Josephus. 
Bishop  Heber  followed  the  same  path  as  Montgomery  with  less 
success,  and  left  a  fragmentary  "World  Before  the  Flood"  as  well 
as  various  other  Biblical  narratives.  A  third  handling  of  the  Deluge 
and  the  Antediluvians  is  found  in  Dale's  "Irad  and  Adah,  a  Tale 
of  the  Flood,"  which  came  out  a  decade  later  than  Montgomery's 
epic,  and  which,  like  its  contemporary  poems,  "Adonais"  and  "The 
Eve  of  St.  Agnes,"  used  the  romantic  stanza  of  Spenser.  There  is 
some  excellent  description  in  the  poem.  Blackwood's,  in  a  very 
favorable  review,  placates  the  prudish  age  by  announcing  that  heads 
of  families  "cannot  lay  before  young  eyes  a  more  pure  and  instruc- 
tive page  than  that  of  Mr.  Dale."  It  was  at  that  very  time  that  the 
clergjonen  of  England  were  thrown  into  spasms  by  Byron's  "Cain," 
so  curiously  do  the  threads  of  literary  influence  get  criss-crossed. 
Several  minors  turned  out  brief  lyrics  on  ancient  Palestine,  George 
Croly,  for  example,  writing  verses  on  Jacob's  dream  and  Christ's 
entry  into  Jerusalem.  For  better  or  worse,  the  thing  was  in  the  air; 
and  in  1817  we  find  James  Hogg  lamenting  that  "save  two  or  three 
Hebrew  Melodies,  I  have  not  written  a  line  since  I  left  Edinburgh." 
The  most  popular  and  consistent  representative  of  this  current 
was  the  Rev.  Henry  H.  Milman,  whose  Biblical  dramas,  "The  Fall 
of  Jerusalem,"  "The  Martyr  of  Antioch,"  and  "Belshazzar,"  ap- 

[  243  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

peared  between  1820  and  1822.  The  second  has  some  points  of  like- 
ness to  Chateaubriand's  "Les  Martyrs,"  published  in  France  thirteen 
years  before;  and  the  third  handles  a  theme,  Belshazzar's  last 
banquet,  which  poet  and  painter  of  that  time  wore  sadly  threadbare. 
There  is  little  of  enduring  quality  in  Milman's  rhetoric,  his  mag- 
nificent stucco  palaces  of  words;  but  he  met  for  a  short  time  with 
an  enthusiastic  welcome.  "A  glorious  poem,"  Heber  called  "The  Fall 
of  Jerusalem."  Mrs.  Hemans,  who  herself  produced  a  number  of 
Hebraic  lyrics,  wrote  of  "The  Martyr  of  Antioch":  "It  has  added 
another  noble  proof  to  those  you  had  already  given  the  world  of  the 
power  and  dignity  which  genius  derives  from  its  consecration  to 
high  and  sacred  purposes."  This  enthusiasm  was  not  confined  to 
Milman's  fellow  Hebraists,  for  The  Quarterly  Review  called  his 
"Fall  of  Jerusalem"  a  poem,  "to  which,  without  extravagant  en- 
comium, it  is  not  unsafe  to  promise  whatever  immortality  the  English 
language  can  bestow."  Blackwood's  in  a  later  and  wiser  article  justly 
complained  that  the  author  had  been  spoiled  by  the  overpraise  of 
reviewers.  Even  during  the  hour  of  its  glory,  Milman's  popularity 
had  something  false  and  hollow  about  it,  unlike  the  genuine  enthu- 
siasm felt  for  earlier  favorites.  In  the  year  of  his  "Belshazzar"  this 
was  the  judgment  of  Mary  Mitford:  "I  fancy  that  nine-tenths  of  Mr. 
Milman's  readers  care  as  little  for  poetry  as  you  do;  only  that  very 
few  have  the  honesty  to  say  so.  They  read  him  for  fashion,  for  the 
honor  and  glory  of  reading  a  poem,  and  the  soberer  credit  of  reading 
a  good  book.  It's  a  sort  of  union  of  sermon  and  romance — a  Sunday 
evening  amusement  which  mamas  tolerate  and  papas  smile  upon. 
So,  the  book  sells;  and  it  ought  to  sell." 

This  Hebraic  tendency  in  literature  ran  parallel  to  a  similar  one 
in  painting,  although  in  the  latter  field  it  was  less  of  an  innovation. 
Between  181 1  and  181 7  the  two  Anglicized  American  painters, 
Benjamin  West  and  his  disciple  Washington  Allston,  exhibited  in 
England  a  series  of  pictures  on  Scriptural  subjects,  "Christ  Healing 
the  Sick,"  "Death  on  the  Pale  Horse,"  "Jacob's  Dream,"  and  others. 
It  was  a  new  departure  with  them,  the  earlier  work  of  West  having 
dealt  mainly  with  classical  history.  In  181 7  Allston  wrote  to  Wash- 
ington Irving  regarding  his  own  "Belshazzar":  "Don't  you  think 

[  244  ] 


POPULAR  TASTE  AND  MINOR  TENDENCIES 

it  a  fine  subject?  I  know  not  any  that  so  happily  unites  the  magnifi- 
cent and  the  awful:  a  mighty  sovereign,  surrounded  by  his  whole 
court,  intoxicated  with  his  own  state — in  the  midst  of  his  revellings, 
palsied  in  a  moment  under  the  spell  of  a  preternatural  hand." 
During  the  same  period,  but  beginning  somewhat  earlier,  Haydon, 
the  friend  of  Keats,  painted  "The  Judgment  of  Solomon,"  "Christ's 
Entry  into  Jerusalem,"  "Christ's  Agony  in  the  Garden,"  and 
"Lazarus,"  all  completed  before  1822,  the  year  of  Milman's  "Bel- 
shazzar."  In  181 8  one  finds  Mary  Mitford  eying  critically  Wilkie's 
"dirty  'Bathsheba,'  "  as  well  as  "Mr.  Ward's  sprawling  ^Angel,'  and 
Mr.  Hofland's  exquisite  ^Jerusalem.'  "  The  paintings  of  West,  at 
least,  were  popular  and  influential. 

Both  in  art  and  literature  this  tendency  appears  to  have  run  its 
course  and  produced  something  of  a  reaction.  Milman  tells  us  that 
"Belshazzar"  found  a  much  colder  reception  than  its  predecessors; 
and  the  next  year  Joseph  Severn  in  Italy  wrote  of  his  "Lorenzo  di 
Medici":  "Why  I  take  this  subject  is — first,  I  am,  and  everybody 
else  is,  sick  of  sacred  ones."  Charles  Wells's  "Joseph  and  his 
Brethren,"  which  has  been  discussed  elsewhere,  in  1824  fell  dead 
from  the  press,  and  this  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  its  rich  grandilo- 
quence of  language,  though  better  than  Milman's,  has  a  certain 
kindred  element. 

All  the  phenomena  alluded  to  so  far,  the  collapse  of  Byron's 
vogue,  the  multitude  of  minor  poets,  and  the  rise  of  the  Hebrew 
wave,  are  gone  over  sardonically  in  the  eleventh  canto  of  "Don 
Juan."  The  hero  in  London 

saw  ten  thousand  living  authors  pass. 
That  being  about  their  average  numeral; 
Also  the  eighty  "greatest  living  poets," 
As  every  paltry  magazine  can  show  its. 

Byron  himself,  we  are  told, 

Was  reckoned  a  considerable  time 
The  grand  Napoleon  of  the  realms  of  rhyme. 
But  "Juan"  was  my  Moscow,  and  "Faliero" 
My  Leipsic,  and  my  Moimt  Saint  Jean  seems  "Cain."  .  .  . 

[  24S  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

Sir  Walter  reigned  before  me;  Moore  and  Campbell 

Before  and  after;  but  now  grown  more  holy, 
The  muses  upon  Sion's  hill  must  ramble 

With  poets  almost  clergymen,  or  wholly. 

These  lines  were  apparently  written  early  in  1823. 

Less  popular  than  the  Hebraic  current,  but  of  more  enduring 
value,  was  the  Hellenic,  which  was  also  an  offshoot  of  Orientalism. 
It  is  most  prominent  in  the  writings  of  the  Hunt  circle,  but  by  no 
means  confined  to  them.  Shortly  before  1823  the  Rev.  George  Croly 
wrote  a  considerable  amount  of  verse  on  Greek  themes,  including 
"Gems,  from  the  Antique,"  a  series  of  short  poems,  each  accom- 
panied by  an  engraving  of  the  carved  gem  on  which  the  lines  are 
based.  Meanwhile  the  Greek  war  for  liberty  had  begun;  and  in  1822 
Campbell  composed  his  "Song  of  the  Greeks," 

Again  to  the  battle,  Achaians, 

soon  followed  by  his  "Stanzas  on  the  Battle  of  Navarino."  Tom 
Moore  became  interested,  read  many  books  about  ancient  or  modern 
Hellas,  and  in  1826  printed  his  very  flabby  "Evenings  in  Greece." 
Between  Keats's  "Endymion"  and  "Hyperion"  had  appeared 
Thomas  Hope's  prose  romance,  "Anastasius,  or  Memoirs  of  a 
Greek,  written  at  the  Close  of  the  Eighteenth  Century,"  which 
Miss  Mitford  at  first  attributed  to  Byron  because  it  seemed  to  her 
so  "altogether  Grecian."  A  little  later  we  find  Miss  Mitford  herself 
"so  in  love  with  Aeschylus  and  Sophocles  .  .  .  that  I  can  really 
hardly  think  or  talk  of  anything  else."  Articles  on  ancient  or  modern 
Greece  abound  in  the  leading  magazines  of  the  period. 

There  was  a  widespread  interest  also  in  modern  foreign  literatures. 
The  London  Magazine,  though  the  foremost,  was  not  the  only 
periodical  to  open  its  pages  for  articles  and  reviews  on  continental 
activities  in  that  general  awakening  and  unrest  voiced  by  De 
Quincey.  "We  have  hitherto  seen  no  rational  criticism  on  Greek 
literature;  nor,  indeed,  to  say  the  truth,  much  criticism  which 
teaches  anything,  or  solves  anything,  upon  any  literature."  George 
Borrow  in  1826  published  an  immature  and  little-noticed  volume  of 
translations  from  the  Danish,  the  major  part  of  it  taken  from  the 

[  246  ] 


POPULAR  TASTE  AND  MINOR  TENDENCIES 

contemporary  poet  and  dramatist,  the  greatest  of  Danish  roman- 
ticists, Oehlenschlager.  Carlyle  and  De  Quincey  were  at  work  intro- 
ducing German  literature  into  England.  Along  with  this,  though  not 
through  the  same  purveyors,  came  the  pseudo-sciences  of  the  German 
Romantic  period,  the  phrenology  of  Gall  and  Spurzheim,  the  physi- 
ognomy of  Lavatar,  and  the  animal  magnetism  of  Mesmer.  These 
"inflammatory  branches  of  learning"  were  much  discussed  among 
the  idle  and  young  of  London  around  1825. 

In  general,  the  closing  years  of  the  romantic  generation  were 
marked  less  by  the  formation  of  new  tendencies  than  by  the  decay 
and  degradation  of  old  ones.  After  1822  few  new  notes  are  heard 
even  among  the  great  writers,  and  those  few  are  unheeded  by  the 
public.  All  the  old  tendencies  are  going  to  seed;  all  the  old  fields 
being  worked  to  death  by  swarming  imitators.  Dreary  is  the  picture 
given  by  Washington  Irving  in  1823:  "There  are  such  quantities 
of  these  legendary  and  romantic  tales  now  littering  from  the  press 
both  in  England  and  Germany,  that  one  must  take  care  not  to  fall 
into  the  commonplace  of  the  day.  Scott's  manner  must  likewise  be 
widely  avoided."  Byron  bears  similar  testimony  in  "Don  Juan": 

I  won't  describe;  description  is  my  forte, 

But  every  fool  describes  in  these  bright  days 

His  wondrous  journey  to  some  foreign  court. 

And  spawns  his  quarto,  and  demands  your  praise, 

Death  to  his  publisher,  to  him  'tis  sport; 

While  Nature,  tortured  twenty  thousand  ways, 

Resigns  herself  with  exemplary  patience 

To  guide-books,  rhymes,  tours,  sketches,  illustrations. 

The  most  interesting  figure  among  these  shoals  of  imitators  was 
Mrs.  Hemans.  Her  pliant,  receptive,  ultra-feminine  mind  molded 
itself  to  her  time  as  a  devoted  wife  molds  her  character  to  her  hus- 
band's wishes.  Consequently  her  poetry  becomes  a  thermometer  of 
taste  for  her  age  and  so  acquires  an  extrinsic  value  which  it  does 
not  possess  as  pure  literature.  Every  transitory  wave  of  literary 
enthusiasm  in  her  generation  has  left  its  impress  on  the  yielding 
sand  of  her  imagination.  Her  creative  period  ran  from  181 6  to  1834, 
from  the  first  appearance  of  Keats  to  the  first  triumphs  of  Tenny- 

[  247  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

son.  In  182 1  the  Quarterly  Review,  which  had  lashed  "Endymion," 
spoke  of  her  with  kindly  praise;  and  mentioned  her  vogue  as  recent 
but  already  considerable.  For  years  her  verse  was  widely  read  while 
that  of  Keats  and  Shelley  gathered  dust  on  bookstore  shelves. 
Because  she  was  the  voice  of  the  more  superficial  thought  of  her 
time,  she  was  overrated  in  her  own  day;  and  for  that  very  reason 
she  is  underrated  in  ours.  She  wrote  from  the  romantic  depths  of  a 
woman's  dream  world,  and  in  an  ancient  story  of  morbid  passion 
and  intrigue  could  see  nothing  but  the  triumph  of  pure  affection: 

Who  called  thee  strong  as  death,  O  Love? 
Mightier  thou  wast  and  art. 

Such  uncritical  enthusiasm  jars  on  the  scientific  temper  of  our  own 
day.  Yet  she  was  one  of  the  most  musical  and  picturesque  of  minor 
poets;  and  her  feeling  was  as  sincere  as  her  intellectual  horizon  was 
limited. 

It  is  her  historical  position,  however,  rather  than  her  poetical 
merit  which  makes  her  worth  lengthy  discussion.  To  read  her  col- 
lected poems  is  to  chart  all  the  currents  of  popular  taste  from 
Waterloo  to  the  death  of  Scott.  "Ossian,"  whose  vogue  was  yet 
widespread,  leaves  many  traces,  as  in  the  description  of  the  deserted 
Alhambra: 

Within  thy  pillared  courts  the  grass  waves  high. 

The  Byronic  hero  occasionally  appears, 

And  all — except  the  heart  he  brings — is  peace. 

At  other  times  we  have  the  rich  Oriental  color  of  "The  Giaour"  and 
"Lalla  Rookh." 

Last  night  a  sound  was  in  the  Moslem  camp, 

And  Asia's  hills  re-echoed  to  a  cry 

Of  savage  mirth! — ^Wild  horn,  and  war-steed's  tramp, 

Blent  with  the  shout  of  barbarous  revelry; 

or  we  encounter  a  glowing  description  of  a  Hindu  city,  an  account 
based  on  Forbes's  "Oriental  Memoirs."  She  follows  in  the  wake 
of  Milman's  and  Heber's  Hebraic  verse  with  her  "Belshazzar's 

[  248  ] 


POPULAR  TASTE  AND  MINOR  TENDENCIES 

Feast"  and  similar  poems,  and  in  the  wake  of  Keats  and  Shelley 
with  a  dozen  Hellenic  lyrics  and  "Modern  Greece,"  rich  with  the 
spoils  of  time, — and  of  "Childe  Harold,"  Canto  II. 

Where  are  the  Fauns,  whose  flute-notes  breathe  and  die 

On  the  green  hills? — the  founts,  from  sparry  caves 
Through  the  wild  places  bearing  melody? 

wails  the  exile  from  ancient  Hellas.  She  admires  with  the  disciples 
of  Chateaubriand  "the  forest  primeval"  beyond  the  Atlantic. 

The  woods — oh!  solemn  are  the  boundless  woods 
Of  the  great  western  world  when  day  declines. 

And  louder  sounds  the  roll  of  distant  floods, 
More  deep  the  rustling  of  the  ancient  pines. 

Though  founded  on  an  American  work,  "Sketches  of  Connecticut," 
this  passage  sounds  like  a  direct  borrowing  from  certain  passages 
in  "Le  Genie  du  Christianisme."  In  several  poems  she  responded 
with  alacrity  to  the  growing  enthusiasm  for  both  ancient  and  modern 
Italy: 

Home  of  the  Arts!  where  glory's  faded  smile 
Sheds  lingering  light  o'er  many  a  mouldering  pile; 
Proud  wreck  of  vanish'd  power,  of  splendor  fled, 
Majestic  temple  of  the  mighty  dead. 

Above  all  things  else,  however,  Mrs.  Hemans,  like  the  poetry 
readers  of  her  age,  turned  to  sentimentalized  medievalism.  All  the 
different  types  of  this  which  her  age  evolved  one  after  the  other 
are  found  in  her  pages.  There  is  German  medievalism,  as  usual 
rather  more  wild  and  ghostly  than  the  other  varieties,  with  its 
Heilige  Vehme, 

that  awful  band, 
The  Secret  Watchers  of  the  land. 
They  that,  unknown  and  uncontroU'd 
Their  dark  and  dread  tribunal  hold; 

or  with  its  revivified  horrors  from  Scott  and  Burger, 

As  the  Wild  Night-Huntsman  pass'd. 

[  249  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

There  is  Scandinavian  medievalism,  as  in  the  "Valkyriur  Song," 
a  rather  weak  anti-climax  to  Gray's  'Tatal  Sisters."  There  is  Eng- 
lish medievalism,  with  more  history  and  fewer  ghosts,  as  in  "The 
Troubadour  and  Richard  Coeur  de  Lion,"  where  the  poetess  re- 
touches a  theme  handled  by  Tom  Warton  in  the  dim  dawn  of 
romantic  medievalism.  Then  there  are  a  whole  succession  of  armored 
knights  and  turbaned  Moors  from  ancient  Spain,  glimpses  of 

the  clear,  broad  river  flowing 
Past  the  old  Moorish  ruin  on  the  steep, 

and  of  rocks  that  have 

echo'd  to  the  tale 
Of  knights  who  fell  in  Roncevalles'  vale, 

for  which  local  color,  as  usual  in  the  South,  replaces  the  supernatural 
thrill  associated  with  northern  antiquity.  Last  and  most  important 
comes  a  considerable  volume  of  "Welsh  Melodies,"  one  of  them, 
"Prince  Madoc's  Farewell,"  dealing  with  the  hero  of  Southey's 
longest  epic,  and  others  that  point  back  to  "The  Bard"  of  Gray,  or 
that  may  have  helped  to  call  forth  the  partly  romantic,  mainly 
satirical  Welsh  past  in  Peacock's  "Misfortunes  of  Elphin."  Over 
all,  that  sentimentalism  which  the  early  nineteenth-century  public 
inherited  from  the  late  eighteenth  sparkles  like  a  dew  of  tears;  and 
over  all  we  trace  the  mood  which  made  Mrs.  Hemans  exclaim: 

Alas!  that  aught  so  fair  should  fly. 
Thy  blighting  wand.  Reality! 

Yet  the  fair  authoress  was  more  genuine  in  following  these  different 
currents  than  may  at  first  appear.  Her  Welsh  medievalism  was 
inspired  by  her  residence  in  Wales.  Her  Spanish  enthusiasm  began 
when  her  brothers,  as  soldiers,  were  serving  in  the  Iberian  peninsula. 
Her  enthusiasm  for  Italy  must  have  owed  something  to  the  fact 
that  she  was  partly  of  Italian  blood.  More  than  that,  she  wrote  in  a 
period  when  the  various  national  "romantic  movements"  were  flow- 
ing together,  and  creating  a  genuine  interest  in  many  currents. 
Minor  though  she  is,  a  study  of  her  sources  and  the  mottoes  quoted 
before  her  poems  leads  one  to  Herder,  the  German;   to  Oehlen- 

[  250  ] 


POPULAR  TASTE  AND  MINOR  TENDENCIES 

schlager,  the  Dane;  and  to  Lamartine  and  Chateaubriand  among 
the  French  romantiques.  Also  as  a  translator  she  rendered  into 
English  poetry  by  the  Portuguese  Camoens,  the  Spanish  Lope  da 
Vega,  and  by  Tasso,  Filicaja,  and  Metastasio  among  the  Italians. 
Her  Protean  muse  and  gently  sentimental  vein  remind  one  of 
Procter,  but  she  differed  from  him  in  this,  that  he  took  on  the  poeti- 
cal characteristics  of  various  literary  groups  with  which  he  asso- 
ciated, whereas  she  associated  with  no  group  and  imitated  from  a 
distance.  Both  were  pure-minded,  kind-hearted,  mediocre  poets, 
who  gave  the  kind-hearted,  mediocre  public  what  it  wanted,  and 
now  pay  the  penalty  for  former  applause  by  being  too  severely 
overlooked. 

Mrs.  Hemans  was  well  received  both  by  the  general  public  and 
by  the  discerning  few.  There  followed  her  one  who  was  justly 
ignored  by  the  great  critics  and  poets  of  her  own  age,  but  who  com- 
manded an  even  wider  circle  of  readers.  This  was  Letitia  Landon, 
the  "L.  E.  L."  of  periodical  fame.  As  poetry  her  work  is  naught, 
but  as  a  literary  phenomenon  she  has  her  little  niche  in  history. 
All  of  her  verse  was  written  between  1820  and  1830.  Her  most 
popular  work,  the  "Improvisatrice,"  appeared  in  the  year  of  Byron's 
death  and  the  publication  of  Shelley's  posthumous  poems.  While 
the  latter  were  being  neglected,  six  editions  of  Miss  Landon's  master- 
piece were  called  for  in  about  a  year.  Her  poem  is  the  life  history 
of  a  young  lady  brought  up  in  an  atmosphere  of  music  and  art,  who 
paints  romantic  pictures,  and  improvises  various  romantic  poems, 
one  a  Moorish  tale,  another  a  medieval  story,  turning  on  a  witch, 
a  love  philtre,  and  a  poisoned  young  gentleman.  The  improvisatrice 
falls  in  love  with  a  Radcliffean  or  Byronic  hero,  possessing  the 
"raven  curls"  of  stock  romance.  He  marries  another.  The  broken- 
hearted bluestocking  relieves  her  feelings  by  telling  in  verse  the 
Greek  tale  of  Leades  and  Cydippe,  and  then  passes  away  in  a  genteel 
consumption.  The  poem  is  full  of  moonlight,  dark  pines,  Italian 
atmosphere,  and  mawkish  sentimentality.  Miss  Landon  followed 
this  up  with  "Roland's  Tower,"  a  legend  of  medieval  Germany; 
"The  Troubadour,"  a  long  rhyming  romance  in  the  manner  of 
Scott;  and  "The  Golden  Violet,"  a  series  of  tales  in  a  narrative 

[  251  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

framework  like  Hogg's  "Queen's  Wake";  all  of  which  are  the  most 
unmixed  and  unrelieved  type  of  pseudo-medievalism. 

'Twas  a  fair  sight,  that  arm'd  array, 
Winding  through  the  deep  vale  their  way, 
Helmet  and  breast-plate  gleaming  in  gold, 
Banners  waving  their  crimson  fold. 

Or  in  some  empty  castle  the  author  recalls 

How  through  the  portals  sweeping  came 
Proud  cavalier  and  high-born  dame. 

A  few  discerning  judges  at  one  time  found  something  in  her.  Laman 
Blanchard  wrote  her  biography;  and  Mrs.  Browning  with  sisterly 
feeling  lamented  the  hour 

when  the  glory  of  her  dream  withdrew, 
When  knightly  guests  and  courtly  pageantries 
Were  broken  in  her  visionary  eyes. 

For  years  she  contributed  to  The  Literary  Gazette,  and  her  quali- 
ties are  those  usually  found  in  popular  magazine  poets.  She  is  said 
to  have  cleared  at  least  £2500  from  her  writings,  a  small  sum  in  the 
second  decade  of  the  century,  but  a  large  one  in  the  third,  when  no 
one  save  Tom  Moore  probably  fared  much  better.  Herself  a  slavish 
imitator,  she  apparently  had  many  imitators  among  infinitesimal 
versifiers,  shadows  of  a  shade. 

-"  Meanwhile  another  current  than  those  discussed,  the  "Gothic," 
was  spreading  out  like  them  into  a  stagnant  marsh,  full  of  croaking 
imitators.  The  Gothic  tradition,  though  closely  related  to  the  medie- 
val, was  essentially  different  in  spell,  its  works  often  describing 
modern  times,  and  depending  mainly  on  the  thrill  of  terror,  whereas 
the  other  appealed  chiefly  to  the  love  of  the  picturesque.  From  1800 
to  1815  the  public  was  satiated  with  the  "Gothic"  terrors  of  Ann 
Radcliffe,  and  welcomed  new  works  of  the  kind  languidly.  After 
that  period  the  tale  of  terror  once  more  came  into  its  own  with  the 
masses,  though  frowned  on  by  the  more  intelligent  critics.  The 
chief  leader  in  the  unpropitious  revival  was  Maturin,  an  Irish  clergy- 
man. His  blank-verse  tragedy  "Bertram,"  with  its  shipwrecked 

[  252  ] 


POPULAR  TASTE  AND  MINOR  TENDENCIES 

bandit  hero,  its  thunderstorms  and  darkened  abbeys,  its  trash  and 
melodrama,  had  a  great  run  both  in  print  and  on  the  stage  just 
before  the  appearance  of  Keats's  first  volume.  In  1820  appeared  his 
novel,  "Melmoth  the  Wanderer,"  which  is  at  once  one  of  the  most 
worthless  and  one  of  the  most  ingenious  of  books.  The  hero  wins 
length  of  days  by  selling  his  soul  to  the  devil,  who  finally  carries 
him  off  in  a  scene  that  wavers  between  the  tragedy  of  Marlowe's 
"Faustus'^  and  the  absurdity  of  Lewis's  "Monk."  Previous  to  this, 
Melmoth  has  been  married  to  an  innocent  and  trusting  girl  in  the 
dark  by  the  animated  corpse  of  a  recently  deceased  hermit,  under 
whose  cold  hand  of  blessing  the  bride  shivers.  The  plot  is  curiously 
involved,  story  within  story,  a  little  like  the  bizarre  plays  of  Tieck 
and  Werner  among  the  German  Romantiker.  Once  more,  as  in 
Radcliffe's  "Italian"  and  Lewis's  "Monk,"  the  reader  treads  the 
dungeons  of  the  Inquisition  and  hears  the  wind  wh'istle  through  the 
ruined  vaults.  This  novel  came  out  one  year  before  De  Quincey's 
"Confessions,"  and  the  two  sold  well  side  by  side,  for  popularity, 
like  misery,  makes  strange  bedfellows. 

Maturin  was  not  a  great  man,  and  the  other  revivers  of  the 
"Gothic"  were  still  less  so.  Except  for  an  occasional  stray  sample, 
such  as  a  few  of  the  "Tales  from  Blackwood,"  most  of  their  work  is 
now  utterly  dead.  Yet  there  is  ample  proof  that  during  the  third 
decade  of  the  century  there  were  plenty  of  these  ephemeral  horror- 
mongers.  "A  man  who  does  not  contribute  his  quota  of  grim  stories 
nowadays,"  declared  Hunt  in  181 9,  "seems  hardly  to  be  free  of  the 
republic  of  letters.  He  is  bound  to  wear  a  death's-head  as  part  of  his 
insignia.  If  he  does  not'  frighten  everybody,  he  is  nobody."  In  1824 
Lamb  wrote  to  Bernard  Barton  that  the  word  unearthly  "is  become 
a  slang  word  with  the  bards;  avoid  it  in  future  lustily." 

It  should  be  noted  that  all  the  writers  discussed  in  this  chapter, 
Milman,  Heber,  Hemans,  L.  E.  L.,  Maturin,  were  comparatively 
isolated  from  social  groups  of  other  writers.  They  did  not  represent 
literary  eddies  in  which  new  thoughts  and  traditions  were  evolved. 
When  we  place  by  them  the  only  other  poets  whose  new  works  were 
genuinely  popular  after  1820,  Procter  and  Moore,  we  feel  the  chill 
with  which  the  atmosphere  of  the  period  must  have  inspired  men 

[  253  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

of  genius.  A  letter  of  Beddoes  in  1824  rings  like  a  dirge:  "The  dis- 
appearance of  Shelley  from  the  world  seems,  like  the  tropical  set- 
ting of  that  luminary  to  which  his  poetical  genius  can  alone  be  com- 
pared, with  reference  to  the  companions  of  his  day,  to  have  been 
followed  by  instant  darkness  and  owl-season:  whether  the  vociferous 
Darley  is  to  be  the  comet,  or  tender  fullfaced  L.  E.  L.  the  milk-and- 
watery  moon  of  our  darkness,  are  questions  for  the  astrologers;  if  I 
were  the  literary  weather-guesser  for  1825  I  would  safely  prog- 
nosticate fog,  rain,  blight  in  due  succession  for  its  dullard  months." 
Five  years  later  Lamb  laments  in  the  same  dreary  tone:  "  'Tis  cold 
work  Authorship,  without  something  to  puff  one  into  fashion."  The 
"Essays  of  Elia"  did  not  reach  a  second  edition  until  1836. 

While  poetry  and  appreciative  criticism  were  both  on  the  decline, 
the  field  of  critical  theory  produced  one  of  the  most  exciting  and 
fatuous  conflicts  in  literary  history,  the  Pope-Bowles  Controversy. 
It  began  in  181 9,  and,  though  nominally  a  struggle  between 
romantic  and  neo-classic  standards,  was  really  a  symptom  of  the 
generally  diseased  condition  of  popular  taste.  In  1806  William 
Bowles,  in  publishing  an  edition  of  Pope,  had  relegated  that  poet 
to  the  high  yet  secondary  rank  long  before  assigned  him  by  Joseph 
Warton  and  now  generally  indorsed  by  twentieth-century  criticism. 
For  a  dozen  years  his  remarks  passed  comparatively  unnoticed  save 
for  a  few  lines  in  Byron's  "English  Bards";  but  in  181 9  Thomas 
Campbell  in  his  "Specimens  of  the  British  Poets"  defended  Pope's 
character  and  genius,  and  especially  took  issue  with  an  unlucky 
statement  of  Bowles  that  all  poetry  based  on  first-hand  observation 
of  nature  and  natural  feeling  is  better  than  that  based  on  descrip- 
tion of  artificial  objects  or  of  transitory  manners.  This  paragraph 
became  the  corpse  of  Patroclus  over  which  the  two  parties  battled. 
Bowles  replied  to  Campbell;  Campbell  replied  to  Bowles;  Byron 
joined  the  anti-Bowlesites,  and  was  followed  by  several  less-known 
figures.  Traces  of  the  conflict  are  scattered  through  the  pages  of 
The  New  Monthly  Magazine,  The  London  Magazine,  The  Quar- 
terly, and  Blackwood's,  to  say  nothing  of  a  host  of  pamphlets  on 
both  sides.  Charles  Lloyd  in  1821  published  "Personal  Essays  on 
the  Character  of  Pope  as  a  Poet,"  verses  in  the  traditional  couplet 

[  254  ] 


POPULAR  TASTE  AND  MINOR  TENDENCIES 

which,  even  when  one  of  the  "Lakers,"  he  had  loved.  "We  know 
that  we  took  some  small  part  in  the  contest,"  says  a  Blackwood's 
reviewer,  "but  have  been  racking  our  brain  in  vain,  to  recollect  on 
which  side  we  fought, — or  indeed,  what  was  the  precise  bone  of 
contention  between  the  belligerent  powers."  The  rather  incoherent 
discussion  apparently  revolved  around  the  question  whether  the 
artificial  life  of  manners  could  be  a  theme  for  the  highest  poetry, 
and  whether  Pope,  as  the  chief  master  in  that  field,  could  be  held  a 
supreme  genius.  The  contest  raged  hotly  for  about  three  years,  and 
somewhat  more  languidly  for  about  three  more.  By  1827  it  appears 
to  have  died  out.  "The  victory  remained  with  Bowles,"  says  Pro- 
fessor Beers,  "not  because  he  had  won  it  by  argument,  but  because 
opinion  had  changed."  In  the  last  analysis  that  statement  is  true; 
but  it  does  not  represent  the  impression  held  by  all  people  at  the 
time.  DTsraeli,  one  of  Byron's  fellow  warriors,  declared  with  a  note 
of  triumph:  "More  than  one  edition  of  Pope  followed;  and  Pope 
was  righted." 

The  controversy  was  partly  literary  and  partly  personal.  In  both 
aspects  it  represented  the  general  tension  between  the  London 
society  poets  on  the  one  hand  and  the  rural  and  suburban  ones  on 
the  other.  Campbell  and  Byron,  the  leading  protagonists  for  Pope, 
were  both  members  of  the  Holland  House  circle.  Of  their  minor 
allies,  Octavius  Gilchrist  was  born  at  Twickenham,  Pope's  home, 
was  a  contributor  to  The  Quarterly  and  a  friend  of  Gifford.  The 
latter,  like  the  elder  D 'Israeli,  was  a  London  man,  and  was  called 
by  Byron  his  literary  father.  William  Roscoe  of  Liverpool  was  the 
only  prominent  figure  in  the  Pope  camp  whose  literary  affiliations 
were  not  with  the  metropolis.  Bowles,  without  being  either  a  "Laker" 
or  a  "Cockney,"  represented,  in  the  eyes  of  his  enemies  at  least, 
the  theories  of  both,  and  drew  down  on  his  head  the  electricity  which 
had  been  gathering  against  Wordsworth  and  Southey,  Keats  and 
Hunt.  The  general  attitude  of  the  "Lakers"  and  "Cockneys"  was 
more  favorable  toward  Pope  himself  than  toward  either  his  imitators 
or  his  theory  of  art.  Coleridge  had  praised  him  while  condemning 
his  disciples.  Wordsworth  knew  thousands  of  his  lines  by  heart; 
and  pronounced  him  "a  man  most  highly  gifted;  but  imluckily  he 

[  255  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

took  the  plain  when  the  heights  were  within  his  reach."  Hunt  in 
the  early  days  of  The  Examiner  modeled  his  style  on  Addison,  Steele, 
Goldsmith,  and  Voltaire.  When  composing  "Rimini"  he  felt  Dryden 
"the  most  delightful  name  to  me  in  English  poetry,"  and  even  said 
that  Pope  "had  been  my  closest  poetical  acquaintance."  But  in  the 
Preface  to  "Foliage"  Hunt  defines  admirably  the  attitude  which 
so  many  poets  held  and  which  Bowles  was  rather  confusedly  de- 
fending: "The  consequence  of  this  re-awakening  of  the  poetical 
faculty  is  not,  as  some  imagine,  a  contempt  for  Pope  and  the  other 
chief  writers  of  the  French  school.  It  justly  appreciates  their  wit, 
terseness,  and  acuteness;  but  it  can  neither  confound  their  monotony 
with  a  fine  music,  nor  recognize  the  real  spirit  of  poetry  in  their  town 
habits,  their  narrow  sphere  of  imagination,  their  knowledge  of 
manners  rather  than  natures,  and  their  gross  mistake  about  what 
they  call  classical,  which  was  Horace  and  the  Latin  breeding,  in- 
stead of  the  elementary  inspiration  of  Greece."  In  a  footnote  to  the 
same  volume  Hunt  makes  a  discerning  and  important  criticism: 
"Pope,  whom  I  consider  a  much  greater  poet  by  nature  than  he 
became  from  circumstances,  was  shut  up  by  his  bodily  infirmities 
within  a  small  and  artificial  sphere  of  life.  He  saw  little  or  nothing 
of  nature  and  natural  manners.  When  he  went  out,  he  rode,  and  he 
was  even  carried  into  his  boat  in  a  sedan-chair." 

It  is  easy  to  see  how  such  an  attitude  would  jar  on  the  Holland 
House  group  of  authors,  all  of  whom  lived  a  considerable  part  of 
their  time  in  that  very  life  of  artificial  manners  which  Hunt  de- 
plored, all  of  whom  for  years  had  written  Pope  imitations,  and  most 
of  whom  were  confirmed  neo-classicists  in  theory.  They  believed 
that  Pope  was  supremely  great  because  of  his  life  and  theory  of 
art;  their  opponents  that  he  was  approximately  great  in  spite  of 
these.  Moore,  who  was  a  personal  friend  of  Bowles,  maintained  an 
amiable  neutrality;  but  Byron  and  Campbell  flew  to  arms. 

This  general  tension  was  noticeably  increased  a  little  before  the 
outbreak  of  1819.  In  181 7  Keats,  in  his  beautiful  but  immature 
"Sleep  and  Poetry,"  made  a  most  radical  attack  on  the  Pope  tradi- 
tion. He  called  it 

[  256  ] 


POPULAR  TASTE  AND  MINOR  TENDENCIES 

a  schism 
Nurtured  by  foppery  and  barbarism; 

and  told  its  adherents, 

Ye  were  dead 
To  things  ye  knew  not  of, — ^were  closely  wed 
To  musty  laws  lined  out  with  wretched  rule.  ... 
A  thousand  handicraftsmen  wore  the  mask 
Of  Poesy.  Ill-fated,  impious  race!   .  .  . 
Holding  a  poor,  decrepid  standard  out 
Mark'd  with  most  flimsy  mottoes,  and  in  large 
The  name  of  one  Boileau! 

As  a  picture  of  the  late  eighteenth-century  Pope  imitators  this  is 
not  so  unreasonable;  as  a  picture  of  the  Queen  Anne  wits  them- 
selves it  would  be  absurd.  In  any  case,  one  can  easily  see  how  such 
lines  would  rouse  the  wrath  of  Byron.  "There  is  no  bearing  the 
driveling  idiotism  of  the  mannikin,"  he  cries;  yet  the  minute  that 
he  believes  Keats  a  convert  to  the  orthodox  literary  faith  he  forgets 
and  forgives.  His  indignation,  he  says,  had  been  due  to  Keats's 
depreciation  of  Homer  which  "hardly  permitted  me  to  do  justice 
to  his  own  genius.  .  .  .  He  is  a  loss  to  our  literature,  and  the  more 
so,  as  he  himself,  before  his  death,  is  said  to  have  been  persuaded 
that  he  had  not  taken  the  right  line,  and  was  reforming  his  style 
upon  the  more  classical  models  of  the  language."  In  1818  Hunt 
said,  "The  downfall  of  the  French  school  of  poetry  has  of  late  been 
increasing  in  rapidity."  In  that  same  year  Francis  Hodgson  pub- 
lished two  poems  in  eighteenth-century  style,  "The  Friends"  and 
"Childe  Harold's  Monitor,"  both  praising  Pope.  "The  Friends" 
declared: 

Not  yet  the  wholesome  dread  of  thee  was  o'er. 

Proud  wit! — ^but  Dulness  thrives,  for  Pope  is  now  no  more; 

and  the  notes  attacked  those  critics  who  depreciated  "this  energetic, 
melodious,  and  moral  poet."  Meanwhile  Byron,  exiled  and  bitter 
at  his  age,  was  growing  more  and  more  ripe  for  war.  In  181 7  he 
wrote  to  Murray:  "With  regard  to  poetry  in  general,  I  am  convinced, 

[  257  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

the  more  I  think  of  it,  that  he  [Moore]  and  all  of  us — Scott, 
Southey,  Wordsworth,  Moore,  Campbell,  I — are  all  in  the  wrong, 
one  as  much  as  another;  that  we  are  upon  a  wrong  revolutionary 
poetical  system,  or  systems  .  .  .  from  which  none  but  Rogers  and 
Crabbe  are  free;  and  that  the  present  and  next  generations  will 
finally  be  of  this  opinion.  I  am  the  more  confirmed  in  this  by  having 
lately  gone  over  some  of  our  classics,  particularly  Pope,  whom  I 
tried  in  this  way, — I  took  Moore's  poems  and  my  own  and  some 
others,  and  went  over  them  side  by  side  with  Pope's,  and  I  was 
really  astonished  (I  ought  not  to  have  been  so)  and  mortified  at  the 
ineffable  distance  in  point  of  sense,  harmony,  effect,  and  even 
Imagination,  passion,  and  Invention,  between  the  little  Queen  Anne's 
man,  and  us  of  the  lower  empire.  Depend  upon  it,  it  is  all  Horace 
then,  and  Claudian  now,  among  us;  and  if  I  had  to  begin  again,  I 
would  model  myself  accordingly."  Coming  as  this  does  just  when 
Byron  was  changing  from  a  disciple  of  Wertherish  romance  to  his 
greatest  vein  of  satirical  realism,  it  suggests  that  the  discipleship  to 
Pope  was  at  least  good  for  him.  In  1818  he  thought  of  defending 
Pope  "against  the  world,  in  the  unjustifiable  attempts  at  deprecia- 
tion begun  by  Warton  and  carried  on  to  and  at  this  day."  Conse- 
quently when  Bowles  and  Campbell  lit  their  matches  in  18 19  the 
powder  was  all  ready  for  the  explosion. 

Although  Bowles's  criticism  was  made  soon  after  Austerlitz 
it  produced  no  marked  reaction  until  after  Waterloo.  The  contro- 
versy was  probably  encouraged  by  the  growing  internationalism  of 
literature  and  criticism,  by  echoes  of  literary  battles  on  the  continent 
fiercer  than  England  ever  knew.  The  critical  warfare  between 
classicists  and  romanticists  in  France  was  just  beginning  at  that 
time,  and  a  struggle  of  earlier  origin  in  Germany  was  just  becoming 
known  to  the  British.  Byron — whose  entire  part  in  the  controversy, 
it  must  be  remembered,  was  acted  in  Italy — wrote  from  Ravenna 
in  1820:  "I  perceive  that  in  Germany,  as  well  as  in  Italy,  there  is 
a  great  struggle  about  what  they  call  'Classical  and  'Romantic,' — 
terms  which  were  not  subjects  of  classification  in  England,  at  least 
when  I  left  it  four  or  five  years  ago.  Some  of  the  English  Scribblers, 
it  is  true,  abused  Pope  and  Swift,  but  the  reason  was  that  they  them- 

[  258  ] 


POPULAR  TASTE  AND  MINOR  TENDENCIES 

selves  did  not  know  how  to  write  either  prose  or  verse;  but  nobody 
thought  them  worth  making  a  sect  of." 

The  number  of  magazine  articles  involved  in  the  Pope-Bowles 
Controversy  would  seem  to  argue  that  the  public  felt  some  interest 
in  the  discussion.  The  gentlemen  of  the  old  regime  were  still  fairly 
numerous;  and  the  following  speech,  made  by  the  aged  painter 
Northcote  some  time  before  1826,  probably  voiced  the  feelings  of 
hundreds:  "But  consider  how  many  Sir  Walter  Scotts,  how  many 
Lord  Byrons,  how  many  Dr.  Johnsons  there  will  be  in  the  next 
hundred  years;  how  many  reputations  will  rise  and  sink  in  that 
time;  and  do  you  imagine,  amid  these  conflicting  and  important 
claims,  such  trifles  as  descriptions  of  daisies  and  idiot-boys  (how- 
ever well  they  may  be  done)  will  not  be  swept  away  in  the  tide  of 
time,  like  straws  and  weeds  by  the  torrent?  No;  the  world  can  only 
keep  in  view  the  principal  and  most  perfect  productions  of  human 
ingenuity;  such  works  as  Dryden's,  Pope's,  and  a  few  others,  that 
from  their  unity,  their  completeness,  their  polish  have  the  stamp 
of  immortality  upon  them." 

The  controversy  was  a  symptom  rather  than  a  cause,  a  symptom 
of  critical  unrest.  The  great  new  poetry  of  the  day  was  unpopular 
and  even  in  its  glory  full  of  faults  for  which  Pope  would  be  a  cor- 
rective. The  popular  poetry,  by  which  the  whole  was  too  often 
judged,  was  genuinely  decadent.  Men  were  longing  for  a  literary 
faith,  and  fearing  to  ground  it  on  either  the  old  or  the  new.  Of  the 
poets  who  had  earlier  imitated  Pope,  Byron  and  Rogers  had  turned 
away  from  his  metre,  however  much  indebted  to  his  spirit.  Camp- 
bell, on  the  contrary,  who  for  twenty  years  had  abandoned  the 
couplet  for  ballad  rhythm  and  Spenserian  stanza,  now  returned  to 
his  old  favorite — though,  it  is  true,  not  to  a  very  Augustan  form  of 
it — in  "Theodoric"  (1824).  Among  the  poets  who  had  earlier 
decried  the  Pope  tradition,  Keats  just  as  the  controversy  began  was 
taking  Dry  den  as  his  metrical  model,  and  Wordsworth  was  beginning 
to  use  rather  frequently  a  modified  form  of  the  eighteenth-century 
metre.  Coming  at  the  end  of  a  great  creative  period  and  at  the 
beginning  of  a  long  barren  one,  the  war  of  words  had  little  influence 
on  enduring  literature.  _.: 

[  259  ]  .: 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

For  a  modern  reader,  the  most  interesting  features  of  the  critical 
battle  are  the  picturesque  figures  of  Bowles  and  Byron,  the  one  so 
pleasantly  amusing,  the  other  so  tensely  dramatic.  "I  like  a  row, 
and  always  did  from  a  boy,"  cried  the  dark-eyed  peer;  and  in  1820: 
"I  mean  to  plunge  thick,  too,  into  the  contest  upon  Pope,  and  to  lay 
about  me  like  a  dragon  till  I  make  manure  of  Bowles  for  the  top  of 
Parnassus."  As  for  Bowles,  Moore  found  "the  mixture  of  talent 
and  simplicity  in  him  delightful,"  but  complains  of  "the  character- 
istic weakness  and  maudlin  wordiness  of  his  notes,"  and  describes 
finding  him  "in  the  bar  of  the  White  Hart,  dictating  to  a  waiter 
(who  acted  as  amanuensis  for  him)  his  ideas  of  the  true  sublime  in 
poetry;  never  was  there  such  a  Parson  Adams  since  the  real  one." 

From  the  "Lyrical  Ballads"  to  the  death  of  Byron  there  is  no 
period  the  creative  works  of  which  could  be  spared.  But  the  years 
from  1824  to  1830  might  be  dropped  bodily  from  our  literature  with 
little  loss  to  poetry  and  only  moderate  loss  to  prose.  No  wonder 
The  London  Magazine  fell  from  great  literature  to  journalism  when 
it  met  that  chilling  wave.  It  is  with  an  Ossianic  mood  that  the  critic 
enters  on  these  empty  years,  where  the  clinging  ivies  of  Mrs. 
Hemans  and  L.  E.  L.  rustle  plaintively  round  the  crumbling  towers 
of  romanticism.  From  1824  to  1828  men  bought  poetry  fairly  well, 
though  apparently  rather  through  force  of  habit  than  through 
genuine  enthusiasm.  Then  suddenly  and  sharply  the  sales  of  nearly 
all  poetry  fell  with  a  thud.  The  year  1826  had  been  one  of  great 
commercial  convulsion,  affecting  artists  as  well  as  business  men; 
perhaps  this  financial  blow  pricked  the  bladder  of  conventionalized 
taste;  but  at  any  rate  what  happened  is  beyond  question. 

In  1829  Jeffrey,  out  of  his  years  of  experience,  wrote:  "Since  the 
beginning  of  our  critical  career  we  have  seen  a  vast  deal  of  beautiful 
poetry  pass  into  oblivion,  in  spite  of  our  feeble  efforts  to  recall  or 
retain  it  in  remembrance.  The  tuneful  quartos  of  Southey  are 
already  little  better  than  lumber: — and  the  rich  melodies  of  Keats 
and  Shelley, — and  the  fantastical  emphasis  of  Wordsworth, — and 
the  plebeian  pathos  of  Crabbe, — are  melting  fast  from  the  field  of 
our  vision.  The  novels  of  Scott  have  put  out  his  poetry.  Even  the 
splendid  strains  of  Moore  are  fading  into  distance  and  dimness, 

[  260  ] 


POPULAR  TASTE  AND  MINOR  TENDENCIES 

except  where  they  have  been  married  to  immortal  music;  and  the 
blazing  star  of  Byron  himself  is  receding  from  its  place  of  pride. 
We  need  say  nothing  of  Milman,  and  Croly,  and  Atherstone,  and 
Hood,  and  a  legion  of  others,  who,  with  no  ordinary  gifts  of  taste 
and  fancy,  have  not  so  properly  survived  their  fame,  as  been  ex- 
cluded, by  some  hard  fatality,  from  what  seemed  their  just  inherit- 
ance. The  two  who  have  the  longest  withstood  this  rapid  withering 
of  the  laurel,  and  with  the  least  marks  of  decay  on  their  branches, 
are  Rogers  and  Campbell."  In  that  same  year  Carlyle  also  declared 
that  Byron  too,  "with  all  his  wild  siren  charming,  already  begins 
to  be  disregarded  and  forgotten."  The  next  year  Wordsworth  wrote 
to  Rogers:  "He  [Sharp]  told  me  .  .  .  that  the  sale  of  your 
Tleasures  of  Memory,'  which  had  commanded  public  attention  for 
thirty-six  years  had  greatly  fallen  off  within  the  last  two  years. 
The  Edinburgh  Review  tells  another  story,  that  you  and  Camp- 
bell .  .  .  are  the  only  bards  of  our  day  whose  laurels  are  un- 
withered.  Fools!  I  believe  that  yours  have  suffered  in  the  common 
blight."  In  1829  Southey  complained:  "The  sale  of  my  books  in 
Longman's  hands,  where  the  old  standers  used  to  bring  in  about 
£200  a  year,  has  fallen  almost  to  nothing";  and  in  1831:  "The  sale 
of  the  works  themselves  is  at  a  dead  stop."  Two  other  letters  of 
Southey,  in  1828  and  1829,  show  how  trivial  and  superficial  was 
even  such  interest  in  verse  as  remained.  "With  us  no  poetry  now 
obtains  circulation  except  what  is  in  the  Annuals;  these  are  the  only 
books  which  are  purchased  for  presents,  and  the  chief  sale  which 
poetry  used  to  have  was  of  this  kind."  "At  the  best,  Allan  [Cunning- 
ham], these  Annuals  are  picture-books  for  grown  children.  They 
are  good  things  for  the  artists  and  engravers." 

In  1827  "The  Shepherd's  Calendar"  of  John  Clare  fell  dead, 
though  in  1820  his  much  inferior  first  volume  had  made  him  a  nine 
days'  wonder.  Taylor  undertook  the  later  publication  reluctantly, 
and  warned  Clare  in  advance  that  the  taste  for  poetry  was  waning 
and  the  world  demanding  prose.  The  annuals,  he  said,  had  got  the 
upper  hand,  and  Clare  had  better  write  for  them.  These  pretty  toys 
were  bought  for  their  gilt  edges  and  morocco  bindings,  the  enclosed 
poetry  being  tolerated  as  a  necessary  evil.  In  1833  a  bookseller 

[  261  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

told  Clare  that  without  such  embellishments  his  poetry  could  not 
attract  attention,  since  people  were  demanding  the  "high  art"  which 
the  annuals  furnished.  The  second  part  of  Rogers's  "Italy"  in  1828 
came  out  almost  unnoticed.  Then  he  issued  a  magnificent  "embel- 
lished" edition,  with  costly  bindings,  and  illustrations;  and,  though 
it  was  probably  very  little  read,  several  thousand  copies  were 
bought — as  bric-a-brac. 

One  variety  of  this  literary  type  was  the  album,  a  silken  Dagon 
to  which  Lamb  bowed  down  in  his  "Album  Verses"  (1830).  Three 
years  earlier  he  had  answered  the  question.  What  is  an  album?  by 
describing  it  as 

The  soft  first  effusions  of  beaux  and  of  belles. 
Of  future  Lord  Byrons  and  sweet  L.  E.  L.'s. 

In  1825  Scott  wrote  in  his  diary:  "Nota  bene. — John  Lockhart,  and 
Anne,  and  I  are  to  raise  a  Society  for  the  Suppression  of  Albums. 
It  is  a  most  troublesome  shape  of  mendicity.  Sir,  your  autograph — 
a  line  of  poetry — or  a  prose  sentence! — Among  all  the  sprawling 
sonnets,  and  blotted  trumpery  that  dishonors  these  miscellanies,  a 
man  must  have  a  good  stomach  that  can  swallow  this  botheration 
as  a  compliment."  Romantic  medievalism,  nature  worship,  and  all 
the  rest,  had  become  part  of  the  fashionable  frippery  for  conven- 
tional young  ladies.  Praed  in  1828  represents  a  miss  of  that  type 
sending  a  "Letter  of  Advice"  to  her  friend: 

Remember  the  thrilling  romances 

We  read  on  the  bank  in  the  glen; 
Remember  the  suitors  our  fancies 

Would  picture  for  both  of  us  then; 
They  wore  the  red  cross  on  their  shoulder, 

They  had  vanquished  and  pardoned  their  foe — 
Sweet  friend,  are  you  wiser  or  colder? — 

My  own  Araminta,  say  "No!"  .  .  . 
If  he's  sleepy  while  you  are  capricious. 

If  he  has  not  a  musical  "Oh! " 
If  he  does  not  call  Werther  delicious. 

My  own  Araminta,  say  "No!"  .  .  . 
[  262  ] 


POPULAR  TASTE  AND  MINOR  TENDENCIES 

If  he  speaks  of  a  tax  or  a  duty, 

If  he  does  not  look  grand  on  his  knees, 
If  he's  blind  to  a  landscape  of  beauty. 

Hills,  valleys,  rocks,  waters,  and  trees, 
If  he  dotes  not  on  desolate  towers. 

If  he  likes  not  to  hear  the  blast  blow, 
If  he  knows  not  the  language  of  flowers, 

My  own  Araminta,  say  "No!" 

Such  was  the  end  of  the  age  which  Wordsworth  began,  Scott  de- 
lighted, and  Byron  astounded.  Annuals  and  albums!  Keepsakes 
that  none  to-day  will  keep,  and  Forget-me-nots  that  time  has  for- 
gotten. Petty  prettinesses  in  the  midst  of  which  even  Letitia  Landon 
would  seem  a  poet. 

Scott  formed  only  an  apparent  exception  to  this  general  blight. 
The  recent  collapse  of  his  fortunes  had  made  him  an  object  of 
sympathy  to  thousands;  the  desire  to  help  that  proud  spirit  who 
refused  all  other  forms  of  help  was  probably  more  influential  than 
the  love  of  literature  in  selling  his  later  novels.  Even  at  that,  they 
had  no  such  vogue  as  "Ivanhoe."  The  only  literature  of  any  merit  in 
general  demand  was  realistic  prose  or  the  acting  drama,  in  both 
of  which  fields  some  laurels  were  gleaned  by  Mary  R.  Mitford.  Miss 
Mitford's  "Our  Village,"  which  was  in  line  with  the  realism  of  the 
Scotch  minor  novelists,  was  received  with  open  arms.  Her  blank 
verse  play  "Rienzi,"  in  which  she  anticipated  Bulwer-Lytton,  was 
a  great  success  at  Drury  Lane  theater  in  1828,  and  if  we  may  trust 
her  statement,  sold  eight  thousand  copies  in  print  within  two  months. 
At  the  same  time  she  had  a  score  of  articles  appearing  in  the 
annuals  of  the  day.  In  1832  the  authoress  was  told  that  her 
name  "would  sell  anything."  But  the  triumph  of  humble  prose, 
acting  drama,  and  femininity  only  accented  by  contrast  the  decay  of 
poetry,  which  was  everywhere  moribund.  Wordsworth  was  increas- 
ing the  number  of  his  readers,  but  he  was  merely  exchanging  an 
extreme  degree  of  unpopularity  for  a  moderate  one. 

And  what  of  the  new  generation?  Already  by  1830  Carlyle, 
Macaulay,  Disraeli,  Bulwer-Lytton,  and  Tennyson  had  appeared 
in  print.  Few  of  them,  however,  had  attracted  attention;  none  of 

[  263  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

them  stood  at  that  time  for  definite  movements  or  well  organized 
theories  of  art.  They  were  drifting,  drifting  in  the  fog  and  night  that 
had  overshadowed  the  intellectual  life  of  England.  And  even  these 
men  published  nothing  in  that  desert  valley  between  1828  and  1830. 
The  great  age  of  poetry  was  dead;  but  it  had  not  been  crowded  out 
by  new  and  more  vigorous  movements,  for  no  such  poetical  move- 
ments had  appeared.  It  expired  in  a  vacuum. 


[  264  ] 


CHAPTER  XII 

Forty  Years  of  Satire,  Parody ,  and  Burlesque 

It  has  often  been  declared  that  the  early  eighteenth  century  was 
the  reign  of  satire  and  the  mock-heroic;  the  early  nineteenth  that 
of  serious  poetry.  The  statement  is  far  from  being  wholly  wrong; 
yet  it  threatens  to  become  what  Tennyson  called  the  blackest  of 
lies,  a  lie  that  is  half  a  truth.  There  was  a  great  deal  of  satire,  parody, 
or  burlesque  during  the  early  nineteenth  century.  As  a  whole  it  was 
less  brilliant  than  that  of  Queen  Anne's  day,  and  much  better 
natured;  it  forms  a  smaller  portion  of  the  literary  total;  but  as  a 
factor  in  the  literary  life  of  the  times  it  was  much  more  important 
than  anthologies  would  indicate.  In  the  outlying  districts,  those  rural 
nurseries  of  the  great  new  poetry,  ther^  was  less  of  it;  but  it  thrived 
still  around  the  big  cities,  and  especially  Lon^n.  In  verse  it  grad- 
ually evolved  from  the  early  couplet  into  new  forms;  and  for  that 
reason  much  which  ha^^Feady  been  included  in  the  chapter  on  the 
Pope  tradition  might  be  given  here.  At  times  such  poetry  represents 
the  hostility  of  one  literary  camp  for  another  or  the  more  righteous 
hostility  of  good  literature  for  bad;  at  times  mere  love  of  fun;  and 
often  the  effort  of  new  literary  schools  to  put  brakes  on  their  own 
over  enthusiastic  speeding.  A  brief  survey  of  it  may  take  the  place 
of  a  summary  for  our  book,  both  before  and  after  the  fall  of  Napo- 
leon, reviewing  the  literature  of  the  romantic  generation  from  a  new 
angle  of  vision. 

The  first  great  satirist  just  before  and  just  after  1 790  was  Burns. 
He  has  been  justly  hailed  as  the  reviver  of  song,  with  some  justice, 
perhaps,  as  the  herald  of  romanticism;  but  we  must  not  forget  the 
judgment  of  Swinburne  that  Burns's  greatest  role  was  that  of  the 
satirist.   He  ridiculed  literature  very  little;    as  a  half -educated 

[  26s  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENEBIATION 

countr3mian  he  was  in  no  position  to  see  or  realize  its  faults;  but 
his  attacks  on  the  religious  form  the  "Hypocritiad"  of  English 
poetry.  They  are  to  ^Tartuffe"  as  a  Scotch  broadsword  to  a  Parisian 
rapier. 

Oh  Pope,  had  I  thy  satire's  darts, 

To  gie  the  rascals  their  deserts, 

I'd  rip  their  rotten,  hollow  hearts, 

is  just  as  truly  Burns  as  the  wail  of  "Highland  Mary"  or  the  wild 
mirth  of  "Tam  O'Shanter." 

Poet  Willie!  poet  Willie!  gie  the  Doctor  a  volley, 

Wi'  your  "Liberty's  chain"  and  your  wit,  ^ 

O'er  Pegasus'  side  ye  ne'er  laid  a  stride, 

shows  that  the  Ayrshire  lyrist  was  not  so  much  gentler  than  the 
Twick'nam  wit  in  handling  the  same  type  of  men. 

The  satire  of  Cowper  we  may  pass  over,  as  it  had  neither  much 
effect  nor  great  intrinsic  merit;  but  we  should  not  forget  that  he 
wrote  it.  Gifford's  attack  on  the  Delia  Cruscan  school  of  poetry 
in  his  "Baeviad"  and  "Maeviad" — which  was  using  a  tomahawk 
to  crush  an  addled  egg — ^has  already  been  alluded  to,  as  has  also 
the  "Rolliad."  In  connection  with  the  latter  appeared  "Probationary 
Odes  for  the  Laureateship,"  pretended  competitors  for  the  laurel 
of  the  recently  deceased  Whitehead.  They  are  thus  weaker  fore- 
runners of  the  famous  "Rejected  Addresses,"  and  like  them  a 
satirical  survey  of  the  poetical  tendencies  of  the  hour.  Gray's  open- 
ing lines  in  "The  Progress  of  Poesy"  and  "The  Bard"  are  bur- 
lesqued, as  well  as  the  "II  Penseroso"  school: 

Hence,  loath'd  Monopoly, 
Of  Av'rice  foul,  and  Navigation  bred,  .  .  . 
But  come,  thou  goddess,  fair  and  free, 
Hibernian  reciprocity. 

The  "Song  of  Scrutina,  by  Mr.  Macpherson"  is  a  thrust  at  Pitt  as 
well  as  at  the  author  of  "Ossian."  "Leave  not  Pitto  in  the  day  of 
defeat,  when  the  Chiefs  of  the  Counties  fly  from  him  like  the  herd 
from  the  galled  Deer.  The  friends  of  Pitto  are  fled.  He  is  alone — ^he 
layeth  himself  down  in  despair,  and  sleep  knitteth  up  his  brow. 

[  266  ] 


SATIRE,  PARODY,  AND  BURLESQUE 

Soft  were  his  dreams  on  the  green  bench.  Lo!  the  spirit  of  Jenky 
arose,  pale  as  the  mist  of  the  morn."  Then  we  have  "A  Full  and 
True  Account  of  the  Rev.  Thomas  Warton's  Ascension  from  Christ 
Church  Meadow,  Oxford,"  in  which  the  learned  poet  of  medievalism 
can  make  his  balloon  rise  only  by  throwing  overboard  his  own  all 
too  ponderous  works.  "I  was  fain  to  part  with  both  volumes  of  my 
Spenser,  and  all  of  my  last  edition  of  Poems  .  .  .  which  very 
quickly  accelerated  my  ascension." 

By  1797  the  false  dawn  of  romantic  poetry,  represented  in  Mac- 
pherson,  Warton,  Collins,  Chatterton,  and  the  later  work  of  Gray, 
had  died  out;  and  new  types  of  poetry  with  new  virtues  and  defects 
lay  open  to  attack.  The  Anti-Jacobin  was  a  brilliant  and  many- 
sided  work,  intended  to  be  more  political  than  literary;  but  its  chief 
interest  for  us  lies  in  its  assaults  on  Erasmus  Darwin's  poetry  and 
on  popular  German  melodrama.  In  both  of  these  it  was  doing  what 
Pope  had  done  a  lifetime  earlier,  and  what  Thackeray  did  much 
later;  for  satire  and  romance,  parody  and  sentiment  are  the  eternal 
positive  and  negative  poles  of  humanity,  not  the  exclusive  property 
of  any  age  or  literary  school.  We  know  of  nothing  more  true  and 
epigrammatic  in  Swift  than  The  Anti-Jacobin* s  definition  of  an 
eighteenth-century  didactic  poem,  "so  called  from  didaskein,  to 
teach,  and  poema,  a  poem;  because  it  teaches  nothing,  and  is  not 
poetical."  The  "Loves  of  the  Triangles,"  in  a  refreshing  take-off  on 
Darwin's  flirtations  between  vegetables,  pictures  the  fair  Hyperbola: 

Quick  as  her  conjugated  axes  move 
Through  every  posture  of  luxurious  love  .  .  . 
UnveiPd,  except  in  many  a  filmy  ray, 
Where  light  Asymptotes  o'er  her  bosom  play. 

Of  the  anti-Teutonic  "Rovers,"  which  laughed  Kotzebue's  chivalry 
away,  mention  has  been  made  elsewhere.  Another  passage  from  The 
Anti- Jacobin  shows  a  widely  prevalent  and  utterly  wrong  attitude 
toward  certain  literary  men,  due  to  their  supposed  political  beliefs. 
After  exalting  Lepaux,  a  very  minor  French  figure,  to  the  fictitious 
dignity  of  representing  the  French  Revolution  and  being  brought 
into  England  by  "Buonaparte's  victor  fleet,"  it  continues: 

[  267  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

Rejoiced  our  clubs  shall  greet  him,  and  install 
The  holy  Hunchback  in  thy  dome,  St.  Paul! 
While  countless  votaries,  thronging  in  his  train. 
Wave  their  red  caps,  and  hymn  this  jocund  strain: 
"Couriers  and  Stars,  Sedition's  evening  host, 
Thou  Morning  Chronicle  and  Morning  Post, 
Whether  ye  make  the  Rights  of  Man  your  theme, 
Your  country  libel,  and  your  God  blaspheme, 
Or  dirt  on  private  worth  and  virtue  throw, 
Still  blasphemous  or  blackguard,  praise  Lepaux. 

And  ye  five  other  wandering  bards,  that  move 
In  sweet  accord  of  harmony  and  love, 
Coleridge  and  Southey,  Lloyd,  and  Lamb  and  Co., 
Tune  all  your  mystic  harps  to  praise  Lepaux!  ... 

"Thelwall,  and  ye  that  lecture  as  ye  go. 
And  for  your  pains  get  pelted,  praise  Lepaux!  .  .  . 

"All  creeping  creatures,  venomous  and  low, 
Paine,  Williams,  Godwin,  Holcroft,  praise  Lepaux!" 

Then  there  is  a  barbed  dart  for  the  "sweet  Sensibility"  of  the  senti- 
mental novel  and  play,  telling  how  Rousseau 

Taught  her  to  cherish  still  in  either  eye. 
Of  tender  tears  a  plentiful  supply. 

Meanwhile  Ann  Radcliffe's  novels  were  on  every  shelf;  and  in 
"Northanger  Abbey"  Jane  Austen's  needle  did  for  them  what  "The 
Rovers"  had  done  for  Kotzebue.  As  Lydia  Languish  proposed  to 
enclose  "The  Innocent  Adultery"  in  "The  Whole  Duty  of  Man," 
so  Miss  Austen's  heroine  would  include  "The  Romance  of  the 
Forest"  among  the  realities  of  a  well-kept  estate.  Her  favorite  read- 
ing is  "Udolpho,"  and  while  on  a  visit  to  a  friend's  house  she  makes 
a  desperate  effort  to  discover  mysterious  papers  and  haunted  apart- 
ments, with  disastrous  effect  on  her  faith  in  Mrs.  Radcliffe.  "North- 
anger  Abbey"  was  written  in  1803  as  an  attack  on  "Udolpho";  it 
appeared  in  181 7,  when  it  served  almost  equally  well  as  a  take-off 
on  the  novels  and  dramas  of  Maturin. 

Byron's  "English  Bards  and  Scotch  Reviewers"  (1809)  is  a 
nineteenth-century  "Dunciad." 

Fools  are  my  theme,  let  satire  be  my  song. 
[  268  ] 


SATIRE,  PARODY,  AND  BURLESQUE 

Between  twenty  and  thirty  living  authors  are  mentioned  in  it,  a  few 
with  praise,  most  with  ridicule.  There  is  Fitzgerald  with  his  "creak- 
ing couplets";  George  Lambe^s  condemned  farce;  Pye,  with  whom 
it  is  worse  to  shine  than  "to  err  with  Pope";  "roaring  Southey"; 
"grovelling  Stot";  "Marmion's"  author,  "Apollo's  venal  son";  "the 
simple  Wordsworth";  "gentle  Coleridge, 

To  turgid  ode  and  tumid  stanza  dear"; 
"wonder-working  Lewis";  "Hibernian  Strangford";  Hayley, 

For  ever  feeble  and  for  ever  tame; 
"the  Sabbath  bard.  Sepulchral  Grahame";  Bowles, 

Thou  first  great  oracle  of  tender  souls; 
"Boeotian  Cottle";  "dull  Maurice";  James  Montgomery, 
With  broken  lyre  and  cheek  serenely  pale; 

"Dibdin's  nonsense";  "the  mummery  of  the  German  schools,"  etc. 
The  poem  took  well  with  the  public,  nothing  but  Byron's  awakened 
conscience  preventing  a  fifth  edition  in  1812. 

In  1 8 13  George  Colman  the  Younger  followed  in  Byron's  wake, 
though  with  much  less  power,  in  his  "Vagaries  Vindicated,"  a  satire 
on  reviewers  in  Pope's  couplet.  The  "Poetic  Vagaries"  themselves 
by  the  same  author  had  appeared  one  year  earlier,  and  were  a  col- 
lection of  burlesque  tales  in  various  metres;  one  of  them,  "The 
Lady  of  the  Wreck,"  being  a  parody  on  Scott's  just  published  "Lady 
of  the  Lake."  William  Combe's  "Tour  of  Dr.  Syntax"  was  a  Hudi- 
brastic  take-off  on  the  descriptive  books  of  William  Gilpin.  It  suc- 
ceeded wonderfully  at  the  time,  had  many  editions  and  several 
sequels,  but  now  calls  forth  only  the  well-known  comment  of 
Polonius,  "This  is  too  long." 

In  1 81 2,  the  same  year  which  produced  Colman's  and  Combe's 
work,  appeared  a  far  greater  one,  the  still  enjoyable  "Rejected 
Addresses"  of  James  and  Horace  Smith.  It  begins  with  the  assump- 
tion that  the  poets  of  the  day  have  competed  in  writing  addresses 
for  the  opening  of  Drury  Lane  Theater,  and  proceeds  to  give  the 
rejected  MSS.  The  "Baby's  Debut"  is  fathered  upon  Wordsworth: 

[  269  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

Well,  after  many  a  sad  reproach, 
They  got  into  a  hackney  coach, 
And  trotted  down  the  street. 
I  saw  them  go:  one  horse  was  blind, 
The  tails  of  both  hung  down  behind. 
Their  shoes  were  on  their  feet. 

It  should  be  noted,  as  a  comment  on  the  public  attitude  toward 
Wordsworth,  that  he  is  here,  unlike  most  of  the  other  victims, 
attacked  for  mannerisms  belonging  to  a  much  earlier  date.  The 
world  seemed  usually  to  become  acquainted  with  each  one  of  his 
poems  about  a  decade  after  it  was  published.  The  melancholy- 
Spenserian  stanzas  of  "Cui  Bono"  ridiculed,  and  also  delighted, 
the  author  of  "Childe  Harold."  They  are  purposely  put  into  close 
juxtaposition  with  lines  assigned  to  the  jovial  Moore: 

0  why  should  our  dull  retrospective  addresses 

Fall  damp  as  wet  blankets  on  Drury  Lane  Fire? 
Away  with  blue  devils,  away  with  distresses. 
And  give  the  gay  spirit  to  sparkling  desire. 

"The  Rebuilding,"  by  R.  S.,  mimics  in  metre  and  other  details  "The 
Curse  of  Kehama"  by  Southey.  The  humorous  wraith  of  Scott 
declares, 

My  knees  are  stiff  in  iron  buckles, 

Stiff  spikes  of  steel  protect  my  knuckles. 

"Fire  and  Ale,"  by  M.  G.  L.  (Matt  Lewis),  is  in  the  easy  rolling 
stanza  of  "Alonzo  the  Brave  and  the  Fair  Imogene."  "Playhouse 
Musings,"  by  S.  T.  C,  shows  that  the  public,  which  had  no  trouble 
in  forgetting  "The  Ancient  Mariner,"  had  not  yet  gotten  over  the 
immature  lines  "To  a  Young  Ass"  written  over  fifteen  years  before. 

My  pensive  Public,  wherefore  look  you  sad? 

1  had  a  grandmother,  she  kept  a  donkey 
To  carry  to  the  mart  her  crockery  ware. 
And  when  that  donkey  looked  me  in  the  face. 
His  face  was  sad!  and  you  are  sad,  my  Public! 

There  are  also  parodies  on  the  "hoarse  Fitzgerald"  of  Byron,  W.  R. 
Spencer,  Crabbe,  and  others.  The  Smiths  tried  the  same  playful 

[  270  ] 


SATIRE,  PARODY,  AND  BURLESQUE 

vein,  though  not  quite  as  brilliantly,  with  "Horace  in  London"  the 
following  year.  A  sentence  from  the  Preface  of  this  volume  shows 
that  the  authors  were  genuine  admirers  of  the  poets  whom  they 
ridiculed,  and  were  actuated  merely  by  love  of  fun  or  by  a  desire 
to  give  an  over  spirited  Pegasus  a  little  friendly  grooming:  "Had 
the  authors  of  'Rejected  Addresses'  listened  to  the  voice  of  Pru- 
dence, they  would  have  sat  silent  under  the  laurels  they  recently 
purloined  from  the  brows  of  their  betters,  rather  than  have  proved 
by  advancing  in  propria  persona  into  the  Parnassus  lists,  how  much 
easier  a  task  it  is  to  ridicule  good  poetry,  than  to  write  it." 

The  same  genial  spirit  animated  James  Hogg's  "Poetic  Mirror" 
(1816).  One  of  the  best  proofs  of  this  is  that  he,  like  Southey  and 
Matt  Lewis  earlier,  parodies  himself.  He  had  intended  editing  a 
collection  of  serious  verse  by  his  various  fellow  poets;  but  when 
that  failed  to  materialize  he  fell  back  on  a  sheaf  of  good-natured 
parodies  wholly  from  his  own  pen.  "Childe  Harold"  is  burlesqued 
in  "The  Guerilla,"  and  the  rhyming  epistles  in  "Marmion"  call  out 
the  "Epistle  to  Mr.  R.  S.,"  Melrose,  Teviotdale,  August  3.  One  of 
the  worst  blind  spots  in  the  critical  eye  of  Wordsworth  showed  itself 
in  his  choice  of  lumbering,  discordant  titles;  and  Hogg  takes  full 
advantage  of  this:  "The  Stranger;  being  a  further  portion  of  The 
Recluse,  a  Poem."  "The  Flying  Tailor;  being  a  further  extract  from 
The  Recluse,  a  Poem."  "James  Rigg;  another  extract  from  The 
Recluse,  a  Poem."  "Wat  0'  the  Cleuch"  imitates  Hogg  himself,  and 
"The  Curse  of  the  Laureate,"  Southey.  One  of  the  best  is  "Isabelle," 
a  take-off  on  the  recently  published  "Christabel." 

Sounds  the  river  harsh  and  loud? 
The  stream  sounds  harsh  but  not  loud. 
There  is  a  cloud  that  seems  to  hover. 
By  western  hill  the  churchyard  over; 
What  is  it  like? — 'Tis  like  a  whale; 
'Tis  like  a  shark  with  half  the  tail, 
Not  half,  but  third  and  more; 
Now  ^tis  a  wolf,  and  now  a  boar; 
Its  face  is  raised — it  cometh  here; 
Let  it  come — there  is  no  fear. 
[  271  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

There's  two  for  heaven,  and  ten  for  hell, 
Let  it  come — 'tis  well — 'tis  well! 
Said  the  Lady  Isabelle. 

The  next  year  Frere  published  his  Whistlecraf  t  poem,  later  called 
"The  Monks  and  the  Giants,"  which  launched  the  Italian  movement 
in  poetry  and  is  in  itself  a  burlesque  on  medieval  life  and  romantic 
medieval  poetry. 

Madoc  and  Marmion,  and  many  more. 

Are  out  in  print,  and  most  of  them  have  sold; 

and  so  Frere  proposes  to  tell  the  story  of  King  Arthur,  whose 
knights  were 

prepared,  on  proper  provocation, 
To  give  the  lie,  pull  noses,  stab  and  kick; 
And  for  that  very  reason,  it  is  said, 
They  were  so  very  courteous  and  well-bred. 

Frere's  poem,  unlike  that  of  Hogg,  is  in  his  most  characteristic  vein, 
that  of  the  genial  but  quizzical  urban  wit. 

Laughter  and  tears  do  not  lie  nearer  together  than  sympathy  and 
ridicule  may,  when  one  is  hitting  the  absurdities  of  a  great  and 
generous  age.  Thomas  Love  Peacock  heaped  unsparing  abuse  on 
many  of  his  contemporaries,  including  his  devoted  friend  Shelley; 
but  one  feels  most  of  the  time  that  whom  Peacock  loveth  he  chas- 
teneth.  His  early  poetry  is  as  serious  as  the  dead,  and  like  them 
need  not  be  irreverently  disturbed.  He  fell  into  his  true  vein  in  1814 
with  "Sir  Proteus,"  "a  satirical  ballad"  though  not  a  great  one, 
ridiculing  Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  and  John  Wilson.  His  fame  rests 
on  his  prose  narratives,  written  in  a  tone  of  friendly  banter  toward 
his  age.  Four  of  them  appeared  between  181 6  and  1822,  and  two 
more  in  1829  and  1831  respectively.  At  times  Peacock  becomes  a 
Thackeray  or  masculine  Jane  Austen.  In  "Headlong  Hall,"  Miss 
Cephalis  Cranium  "flew  to  the  arms  of  her  dear  friend  Caprioletta, 
with  all  that  warmth  of  friendship  which  young  ladies  usually 
assume  toward  each  other  in  the  presence  of  young  gentlemen." 
At  times  the  author  uses  the  microscope  of  Swift,  only  he  holds  it 

[  272  ] 


SATIRE,  PARODY,  AND  BURLESQUE 

before  an  amused  instead  of  a  jaundiced  eye.  Mr.  Cranium  in  his 
lecture  on  phrenology  says  very  incidentally:  "Here  is  the  skull 
of  a  Newfoundland  dog.  You  observe  the  organ  of  benevolence,  and 
that  of  attachment.  Here  is  a  human  skull,  in  which  you  may  observe 
a  very  striking  negation  of  both  these  organs;  and  an  equally 
striking  development  of  those  of  destruction,  cunning,  avarice,  and 
self-love.  This  was  one  of  the  most  illustrious  statesmen  that  ever 
flourished  in  the  page  of  history."  "Mr.  Dross,"  as  we  are  told  in 
"Melincourt,"  "was  a  tun  of  a  man,  with  the  soul  of  a  hazel-nut: 
his  wife  was  a  tun  of  a  woman,  without  any  soul  whatever.  The 
principle  that  animated  her  bulk  was  composed  of  three  ingre- 
dients— arrogance,  ignorance,  and  the  pride  of  money.  They  were, 
in  every  sense  of  the  word,  what  the  world  calls  respectable  people." 

Peacock  felt  at  once  the  charm  of  what  was  best  in  medieval 
romance  and  the  absurdity  of  its  extremes.  Both  moods  appear  in 
the  opening  of  "Melincourt."  "Melincourt  Castle  had  been  a  place 
of  considerable  strength  in  those  golden  days  of  feudal  and  royal 
prerogative,  when  no  man  was  safe  in  his  own  house  unless  he 
adopted  every  possible  precaution  for  shutting  out  all  his  neigh- 
bors. ...  An  impetuous  torrent  boiled  through  the  depth  of  the 
chasm,  and  after  eddying  round  the  base  of  the  castle  rock,  which 
it  almost  insulated,  disappeared  in  the  obscurity  of  a  woody  glen, 
whose  mysterious  recesses,  by  popular  superstition  formerly  con- 
secrated to  the  devil,  are  now  fearlessly  explored  by  the  solitary 
angler,  or  laid  open  to  view  by  the  more  profane  hand  of  the  pic- 
turesque tourist."  We  are  told  that  "the  turrets  and  battlements 
were  abandoned  to  the  owl  and  the  ivy";  and  the  traditional  ruined 
wing  is  reported  as  peopled  with  ghosts,  despite  the  incantations  of 
the  Rev.  Mr.  Portpipe,  "who  often  passed  the  night  in  one  of  the 
dreaded  apartments  over  a  blazing  fire  with  the  same  invariable 
exorcising  apparatus  of  a  large  venison  pasty,  a  little  Prayer-book, 
and  three  bottles  of  Madeira."  The  rest  of  the  castle  was  still  in- 
habited; "and  while  one  half  of  the  edifice  was  fast  improving  into 
a  picturesque  ruin,  the  other  was  as  rapidly  degenerating,  in  its 
interior  at  least,  into  a  comfortable  modern  dwelling." 

Miss  Danaretta  Pinmoney,  a  young  lady  very  romantic  in  literary, 

[  273  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

and  very  hardheaded  in  matrimonial  matters,  cries  out  regarding 
the  heiress  of  Melincourt:  "Nay,  I  think  there  is  something  delight- 
fully romantic  in  Anthelia's  mode  of  life;  but  I  confess  I  should  like 
now  and  then,  peeping  through  the  ivy  of  the  battlements,  to  observe 
a  preux  chevalier  exerting  all  his  eloquence  to  persuade  the  inflexible 
porter  to  open  the  castle  gates,  and  allow  him  one  opportunity  of 
throwing  himself  at  the  feet  of  the  divine  lady  of  the  castle,  for 
whom  he  had  been  seven  years  dying  a  lingering  death."  Inciden- 
tally the  preux  chevalier  would  have  had  more  chance  with  Miss 
Danaretta  if  he  had  been  seven  years  in  the  banking  business. 

Lord  Monboddo's  pioneer  work  in  anthropology,  Rousseau's 
return  to  Nature,  and  political  corruption  in  England,  are  all  hit 
at  once  in  Sir  Oran  Haut-ton.  He  is  an  orang-outang,  a  model  of 
silent  good  breeding,  who  by  education  becomes  a  perfect  gentle- 
man, a  rescuer  of  abducted  ladies,  a  baronet  and  M.  P.  for  the 
borough  of  One-Vote.  Ballad  collectors  and  imitators  are  ridiculed 
in  the  person  of  Mr.  Derrydown.  "One  day,  in  a  listless  mood,  taking 
down  a  volume  of  ^The  Reliques  of  Ancient  Poetry,'  he  found,  or 
fancied  he  found,  in  the  plain  language  of  the  old  English  ballad, 
glimpses  of  the  truth  of  things,  which  he  had  vainly  sought  in  the 
vast  volumes  of  philosophical  disquisition."  As  a  result,  he  "passed 
the  greater  part  of  every  year  in  posting  about  the  country,  for 
the  purpose,  as  he  expressed  it,  of  studying  together  poetry  and 
the  peasantry,  unsophisticated  nature  and  the  truth  of  things." 

"Nightmare  Abbey"  offers  a  curious  contrast  to  Jane  Austen's 
"Northanger  Abbey."  Peacock  has  more  masculine  violence  in  the 
thrust  of  his  rapier  yet  more  imaginative  sympathy  with  the  very 
atmosphere  the  excess  of  which  he  ridicules.  The  melancholy  of 
Ossian  and  Werther,  Gothic  ruins,  and  heroines  in  disguise,  are  held 
up  as  the  amiable  absurdities  of  youth.  The  hero,  Scythrop,  is 
Peacock's  friend  Shelley,  not  the  mature  poet  of  the  Italian  days, 
but  the  young  disciple  of  Ann  Radcliffe.  "Here  would  Scythrop  take 
his  evening  seat,  on  a  fallen  fragment  of  mossy  stone,  with  his  back 
resting  against  the  ruined  wall, — a  thick  canopy  of  ivy,  with  an 
owl  in  it,  over  his  head, — and  the  ^Sorrows  of  Werter'  in  his  hand. 
He  had  some  taste  for  romance  reading  before  he  went  to  the  Uni- 

[  274  ] 


SATIRE,  PARODY,  AND  BURLESQUE 

versity,  where,  we  must  confess,  in  justice  to  his  college,  he  was 
cured  of  the  love  of  reading  in  all  its  shapes."  At  the  end  of  the 
story,  Scythrop,  who  has  made  love  to  two  young  ladies  and  lost 
them  both,  orders  a  pint  of  port  and  a  pistol,  saying,  "I  will  make 
my  exit  like  Werter."  But  he  soon  changes  the  order  for  a  boiled 
fowl  and  Madeira. 

Mr.  Cypress  is  Byron,  whose  made-to-order  melancholy  was  a 
universal  subject  of  parody,  and  is  here  deftly  held  up  as  an  un- 
reasonable though  not  ridiculous  mood  in  the  well-known  song: 

There  is  a  fever  of  the  spirit, 

The  brand  of  Cain's  unresting  doom. 

Southey, — ^whose  supposed  time-serving  tendencies  had  already 
been  attacked  in  the  poet  Mr.  Feathemest  of  "Melincourt," — 
appears  again  as  Mr.  Sackbut. 

Peacock  had  no  great  reverence  for  "that  egregious  confraternity 
of  rhymesters,  known  by  the  name  of  the  Lake  Poets";  and  his 
favorite  victim  was  Coleridge.  He  appears  in  "Melincourt"  as 
Mr.  Mystic  of  Cimmerian  Lodge,  where 

The  fog  was  here,  the  fog  was  there, 
The  fog  was  all  around. 

"  *I  divide  my  day,'  said  Mr.  Mystic,  *on  a  new  principle:  I  am 
always  poetical  at  breakfast,  moral  at  luncheon,  metaphysical  at 
dinner,  and  political  at  tea.'  "  The  second  incarnation  of  Coleridge 
is  as  Mr.  Flosky  in  "Nightmare  Abbey."  "Mystery  was  his  mental 
element.  He  lived  in  the  midst  of  that  visionary  world  in  which 
nothing  is  but  what  is  not.  He  dreamed  with  his  eyes  open,  and  saw 
ghosts  dancing  round  him  at  noontide."  He  declares  that  "mystery 
is  the  very  key-stone  of  all  that  is  beautiful  in  poetry,  all  that  is 
sacred  in  faith,  and  all  that  is  recondite  in  transcendental  psy- 
chology. I  am  writing  a  ballad  which  is  all  mystery."  And  we  are 
told  that  the  Rev.  Mr.  Larynx  would  "lament  the  good  old  times 
of  feudal  darkness  with  the  transcendental  Mr.  Flosky." 

It  is  true,  of  course,  that  in  "The  Rejected  Addresses,"  in  Hogg, 
and  in  Peacock,  one  finds  mere  fun  or  a  friendly  corrective  rather 

[  275  ] 


I 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

than  the  envenomed  satire  of  Pope  and  Swift.  It  is  also  true  that 
some  of  the  same  kindliness  appeared  in  Queen  Anne's  time  in 
Prior,  Gay,  and  Addison.  If  we  wish  for  a  satirist  not  quite  as  gloomy 
and  bitter  as  "Gulliver,"  but  often  of  similar  temper,  we  can  find 
him  in  the  later  Byron.  Like  Swift  he  had  once  moved  in  brilliant 
society  in  England,  though,  it  is  true,  in  a  more  commanding  posi- 
tion. Like  Swift  he  had  been  driven  into  an  exile  more  voluntary 
but  far  from  happy.  His  relations  with  women,  enough  unlike  in 
many  ways,  had  this  in  common  with  those  of  Swift  that  for  both 
the  end  had  been  bitterness.  The  Byron  of  "Don  Juan,"  it  is  true, 
has  by  no  means  lost  faith  in  all  humanity.  There  is  genuine  pathos 
in  Julia's  letter: 

Men  have  all  these  resources,  we  but  one. 
To  love  again,  and  be  again  undone. 

This  becomes  doubly  intense  at  the  death  of  the  really  innocent 
Haidee.  The  rough  soldiers  at  Ismail  honor  Juan  for  saving  a  little 
girl  in  the  charge.  The  robber  who  assaults  Juan  on  his  arrival  in 
England  dies  bequeathing  a  keepsake  to  "Sal."  Even  in  conven- 
tional English  society,  the  author's  pet  aversion,  there  is  Aurora 
Raby, 

sincere,  austere, 
As  far  as  her  own  gentle  heart  allow'd. 

But  in  general,  Byron  the  rake  like  Augustine  the  saint  seemed  to 
believe  that  ninety-nine  one-hundredths  of  humanity  should  be 
damned. 

And  the  sad  truth  which  hovers  o'er  my  desk 
Turns  what  was  once  romantic  to  burlesque. 
And  if  I  laugh  at  any  mortal  thing, 
'Tis  that  I  may  not  weep. 

He  may  still  have  admired  the  beauty,  but  he  had  certainly  learned 
the  practical  inadequacy  of  that  idealism  voiced  by  George  Sand: 
"Since  when  has  it  been  obligatory  for  the  novel  to  be  a  transcrip- 
tion of  what  is,  of  the  hard  and  cold  reality  of  contemporary  men 
and  things.  .  .  .  What  I  should  like  to  write  is  the  human  pastoral, 

[  276  ] 


SATIRE,  PARODY,  AND  BURLESQUE 

the  human  ballad,  the  human  romance.  .  .  .  I  .  .  .  feel  impelled 
to  paint  him  [man]  as  I  wish  him  to  be,  as  I  believe  he  ought  to 
be."  Don  Juan  answers: 

But  now  I'm  going  to  be  immoral;  now 

I  mean  to  show  things  really  as  they  are. 
Not  as  they  ought  to  be:  for  I  avow. 

That  till  we  see  what's  what  in  fact,  we're  far 
From  much  improvement. 

The  satire  on  bad  poetry  has  the  temper,  though  not  the  style,  of 
"The  Dimciad."  Southey  at  the  gate  of  heaven 

ceased,  and  drew  forth  an  MSS.;  and  no 
Persuasion  on  the  part  of  devils,  or  saints. 
Or  angels,  now  could  stop  the  torrent; 

and  as  he  recites 

The  angels  stopp'd  their  ears  and  plied  their  pinions; 
The  devils  ran  howling,  deafen'd,  down  to  hell. 

"Wordsworth's  last  quarto"  is 

A  drowsy  frowzy  poem,  call'd  the  "Excursion," 
Writ  in  a  manner  which  is  my  aversion. 

Then  we  have  a  hit  in  the  opposite  direction  at 

Aristotle's  rules, 
The  Vade  Mecum  of  the  true  sublime, 
Which  makes  so  many  poets,  and  some  fools. 

Byron  follows  the  "Voyage  to  Laputa"  in  his  attack  on  impractical 
education.  Donna  Inez  taught  Juan 

The  languages,  especially  the  dead, 
The  sciences,  and  most  of  all  the  abstruse. 

The  arts,  at  least  all  such  as  could  be  said 
To  be  the  most  remote  from  common  use. 

Byron's  picture  of  war  is  not  so  pessimistic  as  that  given  by  Gulliver 
to  the  Brobdingnagian  king,  for  Byron  was  a  born  fighter  and  felt 
that  the  game  was  often  worth  the  candle;   but  the  sordidness, 

[  277  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

brutality,  and  horror  he  draws  with  an  equally  unflinching  hand. 
Suwarrow,  the  great  military  hero  of  Russia,  is 

Hero,  buffoon,  half-demon,  and  half-dirt. 
Praying,  instructing,  desolating,  plundering. 

The  dazzling  conqueror 

Turns  out  to  be  a  butcher  in  great  business, 
Afflicting  young  folks  with  a  sort  of  dizziness ; 

and  as  for  the  private,  fame  and 

Half-pay  for  life,  make  mankind  worth  destroying. 

It  is  the  probe  of  "Lilliput"  that  Byron  applies  to  courts  and 
diplomacy: 

Now  back  to  thy  great  joys.  Civilization! 
And  the  sweet  consequence  of  large  society, 

War,  pestilence,  the  despot's  desolation. 
The  kingly  scourge,  the  lust  of  notoriety. 

The  millions  slain  by  soldiers  for  their  ration, 
The  scenes  like  Catherine's  boudoir  at  threescore. 
With  Ismail's  storm  to  soften  it  the  more. 


He  sees 


What  Anthropophagi  are  nine  of  ten 

Of  those  who  hold  the  kingdoms  in  control. 


Juan's  diplomatic  business  between  Russia  and  England  is 

Maintain'd  with  all  the  due  prevarication 

With  which  great  states  such  things  are  apt  to  push  on. 

His  English  friend,  Lord  Henry 

was  a  great  debater. 
So  that  few  members  kept  the  house  up  later. 

Among  the  many  portraits  of  corruptible  peers  at  Norman  Abbey, 

here  and  there  some  stern  high  patriot  stood, 
Who  could  not  get  the  place  for  which  he  sued. 

[  278  ] 


SATIRE,  PARODY,  AND  BURLESQUE 

If  there  are  times  when  poetic  glamour  is  thrown  around  sex 
passion  in  a  manner  unknown  to  Swift,  there  are  others  that  strip 
it  away  as  remorselessly  as  the  hand  that  drew  the  Yahoo.  Gulbayez, 
Catherine  II,  and  the  Duchess  Fitz-Fulke  all  demonstrate  that 

love  is  vanity, 
Selfish  in  its  beginning  as  its  end, 
Except  where  'tis  a  mere  insanity. 

Though  Byron's  "desultory  rhyme"  with  its  "conversational 
facility"  is  unlike  enough  the  barbed  epigrams  of  Queen  Anne,  he 
can,  when  he  wishes,  be  pithy  and  poisonous  as  they.  If  a  faithless 
sultana  had  been  drowned  in  a  sack, 

Morals  were  better,  and  the  fish  no  worse. 

Though  Ireland  starve,  great  George  weighs  twenty  stone. 

Pitt,  the  incorruptible, 

as  a  high-soul'd  minister  of  state  is 
Renown'd  for  ruining  Great  Britain  gratis. 

Whether  Byron  as  a  poet  be  greater  in  the  romantic  or  the  satiric 
vein,  as  a  thinker  he  stands  immeasurably  higher  in  the  latter  role. 
Goethe  declared  him  a  child  when  he  reflected,  from  which  moder- 
ately true  criticism  there  has  been  drawn  a  false  corollary  that 
Byron's  poems  lack  intellectual  weight.  On  the  contrary,  the  chief 
appeal  of  "Don  Juan"  is  to  the  intellect.  Reflection  is  only  one  side 
of  mental  activity;  observation  is  the  other;  and  Byron  was  a 
keener,  more  penetrating  observer  than  any  other  poet  of  his  age. 
In  "Don  Juan"  he  amassed  materials  to  keep  a  hundred  philosophers 
thinking.  He  never  asks  himself,  like  Shakespeare,  Browning,  and 
George  Eliot,  why  people  act  as  they  do;  but  he  is  always  asking 
precisely  how  they  do  act.  He  has  the  eye  of  a  hawk  for  every  incon- 
sistency, for  every  departure  from  a  poet's  imaginary  norm.  He 
equals  Homer, 

If  not  in  poetry,  at  least  in  fact; 

And  fact  is  truth,  the  grand  desideratum! 

[  279  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

Besides,  my  Muse  by  no  means  deals  in  fiction: 
She  gathers  a  repertory  of  facts, 

he  tells  us.  Erratic  thinker  though  he  was,  he  was  a  pioneer  for 
modern  realists,  of  the  type  which  he  himself  describes: 

^Tis  strange, — but  true;  for  truth  is  always  strange; 

Stranger  than  fiction;  if  it  could  be  told, 
How  much  would  novels  gain  by  the  exchange! 

How  differently  the  world  would  men  behold! 
How  oft  would  vice  and  virtue  places  change! 

The  new  world  would  be  nothing  to  the  old, 
If  some  Columbus  of  the  moral  seas 
Would  show  mankind  their  souls'  antipodes. 

Life  had  trained  him  for  such  a  task  as  it  had  trained  no  other  of 
his  contemporaries. 

Talk  not  of  seventy  years  as  age;  in  seven 
I  have  seen  more  changes,  down  from  monarchs  to 

The  humblest  individual  under  heaven. 
Than  might  suffice  a  moderate  century  through. 

Byron  has  so  much  of  mockery  and  pose  that  one  dare  not  always 
believe  him;  but,  if  we  can  trust  the  closing  lines  of  "The  Dream," 
the  mood  of  his  last  years  had  all  too  much  in  common  with  that 
of  St.  Patrick's  embittered  dean: 

but  the  wise 

Have  a  far  deeper  madness,  and  the  glance 

Of  melancholy  is  a  fearful  gift: 

What  is  it  but  the  telescope  of  truth, 

Which  strips  the  distance  of  its  fantasies, 

And  brings  life  near  in  utter  nakedness, 

Making  the  cold  reality  too  real? 

Both  had  studied  the  dark  side  of  life  to  the  exclusion  of  the  bright 
one;  but  both  had  examined  their  field  with  "the  telescope  of  truth," 
and  had  made  profound  discoveries  in  detail,  even  if  they  pictured 
utter  falsehood  in  general  proportions.  Their  greatness  came,  not 
from  imagination  or  reflection,  but  from  observation  and  experience. 
The  only  language  which  could  truly  express  what  they  had  found 
was  satire. 

[  280  ] 


SATIRE,  PARODY,  AND  BURLESQUE 

Byron — ^he  said  it  himself — ^wrote  as  the  tiger  leaps.  Turning 
from  "Don  Juan"  to  the  satires  and  parodies  of  Tom  Hood,  or  his 
collaborator  Reynolds,  is  like  turning  from  the  spring  of  a  tiger 
to  the  gambols  of  a  kitten.  Reynolds's  "Peter  Bell,  a  Lyrical  Ballad," 
just  barely  anticipated  in  print  the  poem  of  Wordsworth  which  it 
parodied,  a  poem  which  later  moved  to  burlesque  even  the  serious- 
minded  Shelley.  Hood  has  his  good-natured  though  hardly  friendly 
hit  at  Southey, 

Mounted  on  Pegasus — would  he  were  thrown! 
He'll  wear  that  ancient  hackney  to  the  bone. 

His  "Ode  to  the  Great  Unknown"  handles  the  Waverley  novels 
with  facetious  irreverence,  though  with  outspoken  admiration.  The 
end  of  his  "Stag-Eyed  Lady"  parodies  the  conclusion  of  Moore's 
"Fire-worshipers";  and  his  "Irish  Schoolmaster"  revives  the  mock- 
grandiloquent  Spenserian  stanza  of  the  mid-eighteenth  century. 
"Mary's  Ghost"  is  a  laughing  echo  of  "Sweet  William's  Ghost," 
"The  Wife  of  Usher's  Well,"  and  other  folk  poetry.  The  popular 
vogue  of  Moore  is  pictured  amusingly  in  "The  Wee  Man."  In  the 
"Ode  to  Mr.  Graham"  Hood  looks  down  from  Fancy's  aerial  car 
on  the  literary  world  of  London  and  realizes  its  true  pigmy  nature 
in  playfully  satiric  vein. 

What's  Rogers  here?  Who  cares  for  Moore  1 

Come: — what  d'ye  think  of  Jeffrey,  sir? 
Is  Gifford  such  a  Gulliver 
In  Lilliput's  Review? 

Now  say — ^Is  Blackwood's  low  or  not? 

Now, — ^like  you  Croly's  verse  indeed? 

And,  truly,  is  there  such  a  spell 
In  those  three  letters,  L.  E.  L., 

To  witch  a  world  with  song? 
On  clouds  the  Byron  did  not  sit, 
Yet  dared  on  Shakespeare's  head  to  spit, 

And  say  the  world  was  wrong. 

[  281  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

Campbell — (you  cannot  see  him  here) — 
Hath  scorn 'd  my  lays: — do  his  appear 
Such  great  eggs  from  the  sky? 

All  this  was  before  1828.  Many  years  later  in  "Love  and  Lunacy" 
Hood  burlesqued  the  moon-worshiping  romantic  heroine  in  Ellen, 
who  almost  lost  her  Lorenzo  because,  being  short-sighted,  she  mis- 
took the  new  illuminated  clock  for  the  poetic  luminary.  In  the  same 
volume  "There's  No  Romance  in  That"  rings  the  merry  knell  of 
the  sentimental  medieval  vogue  in  literature: 

0  days  of  old,  O  days  of  Knights, 
Of  tourneys  and  of  tilts, 

When  love  was  balked  and  valour  stalk'd 
On  high  heroic  stilts!   .  .  . 

1  wish  I  ne'er  had  learn'd  to  read. 
Or  Radcliffe  how  to  write; 

That  Scott  had  been  a  boor  on  Tweed, 
And  Lewis  cloister'd  quite! 
Would  I  had  never  drunk  so  deep 
Of  dear  Miss  Porter's  vat; 
I  only  turn  to  life,  and  weep — 
There's  no  Romance  in  that!   ... 
On  Tuesday,  reverend  Mr.  Mace 
Will  make  me  Mrs.  Pratt, 
Of  Number  Twenty,  Sussex  Place — 
There's  no  Romance  in  that. 

Hood  and  Reynolds  were  romantic  poets  who  liked  fun  at  a 
friend's  expense.  Praed  was  essentially  a  modern  Prior.  He  could 
not  have  written  the  luxurious  "Garden  of  Florence"  or  the  mys- 
teriously impressive  "Haunted  House."  His  best  work  in  society 
verse  lies  on  the  border  both  of  our  present  subject  and  of  our 
period,  and  may  be  better  discussed  by  others.  Nevertheless  mention 
should  be  made  here  of  his  medieval  verse  narratives,  which  form 
about  one-fourth  of  his  poetry,  and  were  mainly  written  during  the 
decade  following  1820.  At  times  they  are  wholly  burlesque,  at  others 
half  burlesque  and  half  serious,  suggesting  a  mental  attitude  not 

[  282  ] 


SATIRE,  PARODY,  AND  BURLESQUE 

unlike  that  of  Peacock.  Medieval  Germany,  the  times  of  King 
Arthur,  and  of  Coeur  de  Lion  are  all  laid  under  contribution. 

Sir  Isumbras  was  ever  found 

Where  blows  were  struck  for  glory; 
There  sat  not  at  the  Table  Round 

A  knight  more  famed  in  story. 
The  king  on  his  throne  would  turn  about 

To  see  his  courser  prancing; 
And,  when  Sir  Launcelot  had  gout. 

The  queen  would  praise  his  dancing. 
He  quite  wore  out  his  father's  spurs, 

Performing  valor's  duties — 
Destroying  mighty  sorcerers. 

Avenging  injured  beauties.  ... 
And  minstrels  came  and  sang  his  fame 

In  very  rugged  verses; 
And  they  were  paid  with  wine  and  game, 

And  rings,  and  cups,  and  purses. 

The  tone  here  reminds  one  of  Frere's  "The  Monks  and  the  Giants," 
and  is  the  product  of  a  similar  environment.  Praed,  like  Frere, 
moved  in  the  best  society,  and,  though  not  a  Londoner,  lived  in  the 
London  region.  The  same  laughing  consciousness  of  life's  unromantic 
realities  gives  savor  to  "The  Legend  of  the  Teufel  Haus."  Sir 
Rudolf,  like  King  Arthur  in  "The  Bridal  of  Triermain,"  blows  a 
trumpet  at  the  gate  of  an  ancient  castle;  but — alas!  for  the  romantic 
reader — ^when  the  white-robed  seneschal  comes  out  in  answer. 

He  stayed  not  to  ask  of  what  degree 

So  fair  and  famished  a  knight  might  be; 

But  knowing  that  all  untimely  question 

Ruffles  the  temper,  and  mars  the  digestion. 

He  laid  his  hand  upon  the  crupper. 

And  said, — "You're  just  in  time  for  supper." 

The  satires  and  burlesques  of  Peacock,  Praed,  and  Hood  lead 
one  well  beyond  1830;  and  by  the  time  that  they  were  ready  to  lay 
their  mantle  down  the  shoulders  of  Thackeray  were  ready  to  receive 

[  283  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

it.  The  technical  medium  through  which  satire  is  uttered  changes 
continually;  but  the  spirit  of  it  is  ever  with  us;  and  the  amount,  the 
brilliance,  the  venom  of  it  varies  with  the  extent  of  those  contem- 
porary follies  which  evoke  it,  depends  on  them  fully  as  much  as  on 
the  critical  theories  of  the  day. 


[  284  ] 


PART  III 
GENERAL  DISCUSSIONS 


CHAPTER  XIII 

Romanticism,  Classicism,  and  Realism 

Of  making  many  definitions  there  is  no  end;  and  now  that  the 
elusive  sunbeam  has  been  resolved  into  the  colors  of  the  spectrum, 
perhaps  the  yet  more  elusive  glory  of  poetry  may  be  similarly 
analyzed.  To  date,  however,  we  cannot  feel  that  this  task  has  been 
very  successfully  done;  and  our  own  handling  of  the  problem  aims 
at  a  modest  discussion  rather  than  a  final  settlement.  Professor 
Beers  has  mapped  out  valid  boundaries  for  one  type  of  literature, 
the  medieval-romantic.  Equally  valid  boundaries  could  be  fixed  for 
a  certain  type  of  harsh  realism,  including  the  poems  of  Crabbe  and 
various  novels  of  his  day.  It  is  comparatively  easy  to  separate  from 
their  fellows  certain  poems  on  Greek  subjects  handled  in  a  lofty, 
self-contained  spirit,  and  call  them  classical;  such  poems  as  Words- 
worth's "Laodamia,"  Keats's  "Hyperion,"  and  Landor's  "Hellenics." 
Unfortunately  these  classifications,  however  valid  in  themselves, 
leave  the  major  part  of  early  nineteenth-century  literature  unac- 
counted for.  Moreover  they  represent  certain  traditional  paths  of 
thought  to  which  many  great  poets  turned  occasionally,  but  which 
very  few  follow  consistently;  so  that,  except  in  such  writers  as 
Crabbe,  Scott,  and  Landor,  their  presence  can  hardly  be  considered 
proof  of  a  romantic,  realistic,  or  classic  temperament. 

How  did  the  "romantic  generation"  itself  define  romantic  poetry? 
The  answer  to  this  question,  however  pertinent,  is  far  from  satis- 
factory. The  phrase  was  often  used  to  voice  an  impressionistic 
criticism  of  some  particular  work,  much  more  rarely  to  describe  any 
literary  type;  for  both  uses  definitions  were  few,  conflicting,  and 
never  generally  accepted.  Among  border  antiquaries  the  "romantic 
ballad"  was  one  handling  unreal  and  often  supernatural  material 

[  287  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

from  the  past.  It  was  a  similar  conception,  apparently,  which  Tom 
Warton  had  in  mind  in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century,  when 
he  wrote: 

Some  more  romantic  scene  might  please; 
Or  fairy  bank,  or  magic  lawn, 
By  Spenser's  lavish  pencil  drawn: 
Or  bower  in  Vallambrosa's  shade, 
By  legendary  pens  pourtrayed. 

With  a  similar  attitude,  Coleridge  in  "Biographia  Literaria"  prac- 
tically defined  his  own  share  of  the  "Lyrical  Ballads"  as  romantic 
and  Wordsworth^s  part  as  realistic.  His  own  poems  were  to  deal 
with  "persons  and  characters  supernatural,  or  at  least  romantic." 
Wordsworth,  "on  the  other  hand,  was  to  propose  to  himself  as  his 
object,  to  give  the  charm  of  novelty  to  things  of  every  day,"  and 
direct  his  reader's  mind  "to  the  loveliness  and  wonders  of  the  world 
before  us."  Such  was  the  conception  of  "romantic  ballad"  followed 
by  Scott  in  1802  and  by  Motherwell  in  1827.  This  definition  was 
fairly  clean-cut  and  was  used  consistently  by  a  dozen  writers;  but 
it  applied  mainly  to  literature  handed  down  from  the  past,  and  fre- 
quently was  not  accepted  by  those  same  authors  for  contemporary 
verse. 

In  1805  John  Foster,  a  one  time  somewhat  prominent  essayist, 
published  a  monograph  "On  the  Application  of  the  Epithet  Ro- 
mantic." He  discusses  the  word  mainly  as  applied  to  human  char- 
acter, wherein  "it  imputes,  in  substance,  a  great  excess  of  imagi- 
nation in  proportion  to  judgment;  and  it  imputes,  in  particulars, 
such  errors  as  naturally  result  from  that  excess."  Something  is  said 
about  the  use  of  the  term  for  medieval  romances  but  almost  nothing 
about  its  application  to  contemporary  literature.  One  passage,  howr 
ever,  would  fit  excellently  the  poetry  of  Blake,  which  Foster  could 
hardly  have  known,  or  that  of  Shelley,  which  was  not  yet  written. 
In  the  case  of  the  romantic  person,  we  are  told,  "the  whole  mind 
may  become  at  length  something  like  a  hemisphere  of  cloud  scenery, 
filled  with  an  ever-moving  train  of  changing,  melting  forms,  of  every^ 
color,  mingled  with  rainbows,  meteors,  and  an  occasional  gleam  of 

C  288  ] 


ROMANTICISM,  CLASSICISM,  AND  REALISM 

pure  sunlight,  all  vanishing  away,  the  mental  like  this  natural 
imagery,  when  its  hour  is  up,  without  leaving  anything  behind  but 
the  wish  to  recover  the  vision.  And  yet,  the  while,  this  series  of 
visions  may  be  mistaken  for  operations  of  thought,  and  each  cloudy 
image  be  admitted  in  the  place  of  a  proposition  or  a  reason;  or  it 
may  even  be  mistaken  for  something  sublimer  than  thinking." 

In  1 8 13  Scott  and  Erskine,  in  the  Introduction  to  "The  Bridal 
of  Triermain,"  gave  their  definition  of  romantic  poetry,  "the  popu- 
larity of  which  has  been  revived  in  the  present  day,  under  the 
auspices,  and  by  the  unparalleled  success,  of  one  individual." 
"According  to  the  author's  idea  of  Romantic  Poetry,  as  distin- 
guished from  Epic,  the  former  comprehends  a  fictitious  narrative, 
framed  and  combined  at  the  pleasure  of  the  writer;  beginning  and 
ending  as  he  may  judge  best;  which  neither  exacts  nor  refuses  the 
use  of  supernatural  machinery;  which  is  free  from  the  technical 
rules  of  the  Epie;  and  is  subject  only  to  those  which  good  sense, 
good  taste,  and  good  morals  apply  to  every  species  of  poetry  without 
exception.  The  date  may  be  in  a  remote  age,  or  in  the  present;  the 
story  may  detail  the  adventures  of  a  prince  or  of  a  peasant.  In  a 
word,  the  author  is  absolute  master  of  his  country  and  its  inhabi- 
tants, and  everything  is  permitted  to  him,  excepting  to  be  heavy  or 
prosaic,  for  which,  free  and  unembarrassed  as  he  is,  he  has  no 
manner  of  apology."  Two  facts  are  to  be  noticed  about  this  defini- 
tion: it  is  practically  that  of  the  French  critics,  "romanticism  is 
merely  liberalism  in  literature";  and  it  is  meant  to  apply  only  to 
long  narrative  poems.  Scott,  apparently,  had  not  thought  of  Words- 
worth's lyrics  as  either  romantic  or  unromantic. 

In  1 8 14  the  "De  L'Allemagne"  of  Madame  de  Stael,  publication  of 
which  in  France  had  been  forbidden  by  Napoleon's  censor,  was 
printed  in  England  in  both  French  and  English  versions.  The  gifted 
authoress,  that  "whirlwind  in  petticoats,"  was  at  the  time  a  lioness 
in  English  literary  society;  and  her  work  is  a  part  of  English,  as 
well  as  of  French,  literary  history.  Her  book  contained  a  chapter 
entitled  "Of  Classic  and  Romantic  Poetry,"  derived  mainly  from 
her  German  trip  and  association  with  the  Schlegels.  It  opens  with 
an  explanation  of  the  new  term:   "The  word  romantic  has  been 

[  289  ] 


y 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

lately  introduced  in  Germany  to  designate  that  kind  of  poetry  which 
is  derived  from  the  songs  of  the  Troubadours;  that  which  owes  its 
birth  to  the  union  of  Chivalry  and  Christianity."  Classic  poetry  is 
defined  as  "that  of  the  ancients,  and  romantic,  or  romanesque 
poetry,  as  that  which  is  generally  connected  with  the  traditions  of 
chivalry,"  a  definition  which  was  practically  equivalent  to  that  of 
Heine,  and  which  fitted  a  larger  segment  of  the  German  Romantic 
Movement  than  of  the  English. 

After  the  fall  of  Napoleon  much  foreign  criticism  percolated  into 
English  thought.  In  1816  Hazlitt  reviewed  in  The  Edinburgh  a 
translation  of  A.  W.  Schlegel's  lectures,  and  adopted  as  his  own 
certain  definitions  of  the  great  German  critic.  In  the  words  of 
V  .Hazlitt,  "the  most  obvious  distinction  between  the  two  styles,  the 
classical  and  the  romantic,  is,  that  the  one  is  conversant  with 
objects  that  are  grand  or  beautiful  in  themselves,  or  in  consequence 
of  obvious  and  universal  associations;  the  other,  with  those  that 
are  interesting  only  by  the  force  of  circumstances  and  imagination. 
A  Grecian  temple,  for  instance,  is  a  classical  object:  it  is  beautiful 
in  itself,  and  excites  immediate  admiration.  But  the  ruins  of  a 
Gothic  castle  have  no  beauty  or  symmetry  to  attract  the  eye;  and 
yet  they  excite  a  more  powerful  and  romantic  interest  from  the 
ideas  with  which  they  are  habitually  associated.  If,  in  addition  to 
this,  we  are  told  that  this  is  Macbeth's  castle,  the  scene  of  the  mur- 
der of  Duncan,  the  interest  will  be  instantly  heightened  to  a  sort  of 
pleasing  horror."  The  definition  of  romanticism  as  the  poetry  of 
associations  has  this  advantage,  that  it  would  include  at  once 
'Wordsworth's  "Thorn,"  the  "Cadyow  Castle"  of  Scott,  and  Blake's 
lines  on  a  thistle: 

With  my  inward  eye  'tis  an  Old  Man  gray; 
With  my  outward  a  Thistle  across  my  way. 

Another  closely  overlapping  definition  of  Schlegel  was  adopted 
almost  in  his  words  by  Coleridge  two  years  later  in  "Characteristics 
of  Shakespeare's  Dramas,"  where  we  are  told  that  the  literary  pro- 
ductions of  the  ancient  Greeks  were  "statuesque,  whilst  those  of 
the  moderns  are  picturesque."  Yet  the  conception  of  Schlegel, 

[  290  ] 


ROMANTICISM,  CLASSICISM,  AND  REALISM 

though  approved  by  Hazlitt  and  Coleridge,  does  not  seem  to  have 
been  generally  adopted  or  even  widely  discussed  in  England,  nor 
was  that  of  de  StaePs  "De  L'Allemagne." 

If  the  commonly  used  word  "romantic"  was  so  ill  understood,  is 
it  any  wonder  that  the  much  rarer  adjective  "classic"  was  used  with 
equal  indefiniteness?  Schlegel  had  pointeiT  out  the  great  difference 
between  ancient  Greek  poetry  and  the  neo-classic  writings  of  Pope 
and  Racine.  Leigh  Hunt  and  others,  whether  independently  or  as 
Schlegel's  disciples,  had  done  the  same.  But  although  they  saw  what 
Greek  literature  was  not,  they  were  only  beginning  to  see  what 
it  was;  and  here  also  their  passing  attempts  at  definition  are  like 
the  footmarks  of  one  groping  in  a  fog. 

As  to  realism,  the  romantic  generation  did  not  feel  with  anything 
like  the  intenseness  of  our  own  age  a  cleavage  between  that  and 
romanticism.  Rather  they  felt  that  reality  was  often  the  essence  >J 
of  romanticism.  "I  have  some  idea,"  wrote  Byron,  "of  expectorating 
a  romance,  or  rather  a  tale  in  prose, — but  what  romance  could  equal 
the  events — 

quae  ipse  .  .  .  vidi, 
Et  quorum  pars  magna  fui?" 

This  was  in  1 8 13.  A  decade  later  in  "Don  Juan"  he  declared: 

truth  is  always  strange, 
Stranger  than  fiction. 

About  the  same  time  Hazlitt  said  in  "Table  Talk":  "This  is  the  V 
test  and  triumph  pf  originality,  not  to  shew  us  what  has  never  been, 
and  what  we  may  therefore  very  easily  never  have  dreamt  of,  but 
to  point  out  to  us  what  is  before  our  eyes  and  under  our  feet,  though 
we  have  had  no  suspicion  of  its  existence,  for  want  of  sufficient 
strength  of  intuition,  of  determined  grasp  of  mind  to  seize  and  retain 
it.  Rembrandt's  conquests  were  not  over  the  ideal,  but  the  real." 
In  1830  Lamb  wrote  to  Bernard  Barton:  "A  careful  observer  of  ^ 
life,  Bernard,  has  no  need  to  invent.  Nature  romances  it  for  him." 
On  the  mingling  of  seeming  realism  and  romanticism  in  Wordsworth 
and  the  Scotch  writers  there  is  no  need  of  dwelling. 

[  291  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

^'         The  romantic  generation  was  much  more  definite  in  marking  the 
•  distinction  between  itself  and  the  age  of  Pope.  The  phrase  "romantic 
school"  was  almost  unknown,  that  of  "romantic  poetry,"  besides 
being  rather  rare,  was  vaguely  and  inconsistently  defined;  but  the 
labels  "new  school"  and  "new  poetry"  were  applied  often  and 
pretty  consistently  in  the  prose  of  Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  Hazlitt, 
i    and  Hunt.  The  "new  school"  consisted  of  the  "Lakers"  and  the 
\    "suburban"  poets.  Yet  the  chief  marks  of  the  "new  poetry"  in  the 
eyes  of  its  members  were  only  in  part  those  which  are  usually  asso- 
ciated with  "romanticism,"  cornprising  merely  the  return  to  natural 
scenery  and  homely  truth,  the  simplification  of  poetic  language,  and, 
j   to  a  less  extent,  the  revival  of  the  Greek  spirit.  The  wild  witchery 
of  "Christabel,"  the 

elfin  storm  from  fairyland 

in  "The  Eve  of  Saint  Agnes,"  are  tacitly  passed  over  as  incidentally 
connected  with  the  new  tendency,  not  typical  of  its  principal  aims. 
Scott  and  Byron  were  neither  included  in  the  "new  school"  nor 
definitely  assigned  to  the  old.  At  bottom  the  reforms  on  which  the 
"new  school"  of  poets  insisted  were  less  distinctions  between  lit- 
erary types  than  between  good  and  bad  poetry  in  general.  Their 
main  object  of  hostility  was  not  Pope,  whom  they  read  and  even 
admired  more  than  most  people  to-day,  but  the  decadent  Pope 
imitators  of  the  late  eighteenth  century.  In  a  sense  the  age  of  enthu- 
siasm was  reacting  through  them  against  the  age  of  reason;  but  four 
decades  of  sentimentalized  literature  lay  between  the  two  ages  as 
a  buffer  kingdom  and  deadened  the  shock.  The  main  reaction  was 
against  the  senile  old  age  of  literary  traditions  which  in  the  days  of 
Dryden  had  been  young  and  vigorous.  Lamb,  Hazlitt,  and  Hunt 
often  admired  the  Augustans,  but  would  probably  have  said  with 
Tennyson: 

The  old  order  changeth,  giving  place  to  new, 
Lest  one  good  custom  should  corrupt  the  world. 

If  the  critics  of  the  period  give  so  little  help  in  forming  defini- 
tions, can  anything  further  be  learned  from  the  popular  taste  of 

[  292  ] 


ROMANTICISM,  CLASSICISM,  AND  REALISM 

the  time?  In  some  ways,  very  little.  If  by  the  romantic  generation 
is  meant  the  reading  public,  not  the  little  lonely  groups  of  unappre- 
ciated geniuses,  then  an  attempt  to  define  the  nature  of  its  prefer- 
ences would  be  like  an  attempt  to  photograph  the  changing  old  man 
of  the  sea.  Hazlitt  condemned  the  spirit  of  the  age  for  "its  love  of 
paradox  and  change,  its  dastard  submission  to  prejudice  and  to  the 
fashion  of  the  day."  In  1828  Carlyle  spoke  of  the  preceding  half-  " 
century  as  "fifty  years  of  the  wildest  vicissitudes  in  poetic  taste."  ^ 
The  most  consistent  feature  of  literary  feeling  in  the  public  was  its  ■ 
indifference  to  those  authors  who  are  usually  called  the  greatest 
"romantic^'    poets:    Blake,    Wordsworth,    Coleridge,    Keats    and  ^ 
Shelley.  If  its  dicta  have  any  value  whatever,  they  would  place  the 
above-mentioned  men  in  a  different  literary  category  from  those 
who  pleased  where  they  offended,  from  Byron  and  Moore,  and  from 
Scott,  with  whom,  more  than  with  any  one  else,  the  adjective 
"romantic"  was  associated  during  his  lifetime. 

Early  nineteenth-century  comment  on  the  nature  of  romanticism 
is  only  slightly  more  instructive  than  the  remarks  of  King  Leodo- 
gran's  chamberlain.  The  scholarly  verdicts  of  more  recent  years 
demand  greater  respect,  but  leave  one  with  very  indefinite  conclu- 
sions. The  German  literary  historians,  beginning  with  Heine  and 
de  Stael,  have  emphasized  more  than  others  in  their  conception  of 
romanticism  the  revival  of  the  Middle  Ages,  because  that  revival 
played  a  much  larger  part  in  the  literature  of  the  "romantische 
Schule"  than  in  that  of  French  and  British  contemporaries.  The 
disciples  and  forerunners  of  Victor  Hugo  collided  with  an  intel- 
lectual despotism  in  poetry  to  which  there  was  nothing  comparable 
in  Great  Britain  and  Germany;  so  naturally  the  French  critics,^ 
from  Hugo  to  our  own  day,  have  emphasized  liberalism  in  literature 
as  the  dominant  note  of  romanticism.  In  England,  definitions,  like 
the  phenomena  which  they  were  intended  to  define,  have  been  more 
vague  and  various.  The  medieval  movement  formed  only  a  part  of 
the  whole.  In  general,  critics  who  tried  to  grasp  the  entire  age 
under  one  formula  have  laid  emphasis  on  the  "return  to  nature" 
or  the  "renascence  of  wonder."  Although  nobody  will  deny  the  fact 
that  these  definitions  vaguely  shadow  forth  something  which  really 

[  293  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

took  place,  yet  an  attempt  to  apply  them  in  detail  shows  that  they 
often  become  meaningless  and  often  misleading. 

Can  the  problem  not  be  viewed  from  another  angle,  with  less 
emphasis  on  the  poem  as  a  finished  work  of  art  and  more  on  the 
forces  which  produced  it?  A  literary  movement  is  made  up  of  indi- 
vidual literary  men  moving  in  certain  directions.  How  would  any 
one  of  those  individuals  be  reacting  if  we  could  study  his  mind  in 
the  working?  For  example,  what  were  the  more  significant  and 
definable  forces  working  on  the  brain  of  Keats  while  he  was  writing 
"The  Eve  of  Saint  Agnes,"  and  are  there  not  four  which  stand  out 
beyond  the  others? 

In  the  first  place  there  is  the  social  influence  of  the  literary  group 
with  which  the  poet  happens  ait  that  time  to  be  affiliated.  The  fre- 
quent beauty  and  occasional  unmanliness  of  the  "Cockneys" 
appear  in  line  after  line.  In  the  second  place  there  is  the  inborn, 
personality  of  the  individual  poet,  accentuated  and  developed  by 
such  early  surroundings  as  have  tended  to  make  him  unlike  his 
fellows.  "The  Eve  of  Saint  Agnes"  is  full  of  touches  that  could  have 
come  from  no  other  poet  in  English  literature,  notes  peculiar  to  the 
timbre  of  the  instrument,  to  the  individual  outlook  of  the  soul. 
Thirdly,  beyond  his  own  personality  and  beyond  his  own  little 
circle,  every  poet  feels  the^all-pervading  spirit  of  his  age,  the  literary 
Zeitgeist.  The  weak  minor  drives  before  its  breath  like  a  derelict,  to 
meet  shipwreck  on  some  contemporary  fad.  The  great  author, 
charting  his  course  in  the  light  of  a  deeper  vision,  now  scuds  with 
all  sails  before  that  contemporary  blast,  now  tacks  laboriously 
against  it,  but  never  can  sail  for  long  as  if  it  were  not  there.  It  is 
-his  task,  as  it  is  the  task  of  every  intellectual  leader,  to  make  the 
most  that  he  can  out  of  the  vast  blind  forces  among  which  his  time 
has  thrown  him;  to  curb  their  peculiar  faults  even  if  he  first 
becomes  the  arch-sinner  in  learning  how  to  curb  them;  and  to 
develop  their  peculiar  virtues.  Though  Keats  was  perhaps  less  a 
creature  of  his  age  than  any  of  his  contemporaries.  Professor  Elton 
has  truly  said  that  "he  could  hardly  have  lived  at  any  other  epoch 
and  written  as  he  did."  And,  fourthly,  there  is  the  influence  of  the 
literary  tradition  which  the  poet  follows,  in  this  instance  the  tradi- 
'  [  294  ] 


ROMANTICISM,  CLASSICISM,  AND  REALISM 

tion  of  Spenser,  which  a  hundred  major  or  minor  poets  had  followed 
before  him,  and  which  a  hundred  have  followed  since.  The  great 
poet  in  his  chamber  finishes  the  last  magazine  article  on  contem- 
porary thought,  and  lays  that  and  the  present  on  his  shelf  together. 
He  takes  down  Spenser  or  Beaumont,  and  for  him  antiquity  grows 
modern.  The  spirits  of  the  old  masters  cannot  be  laid;  and  if  their 
dead  bones  are  continually  being  exhumed  by  pedants  and  poet- 
asters, their  living  souls  continually  revisit  the  glimpses  of  the  moon 
in  the  best  of  new  poetry. 

Of  the  influence  of  literary  groups  we  have  already  said  enough. 
Concerning  that  rare  individuality  which  is  each  poet's  peculiar  y 
birthright  much  might  be  said,  were  there  any  one  on  earth  wise 
enough  to  say  it.  But  though  the  imagination  loves  to  dwell  on  this 
theme  of  poetic  psychology,  the  reason  shrinks  from  writing  a 
learned  monograph  about  it;  would  fain  let  that  field  remain  for 
the  present  a  beautiful  terra  incognita^  not  yet  invaded  by  methodi- 
cal research. 

The  successive  Zeitgeists  and  various  literary  traditions  offer  a 
more  legitimate  field  for  systematic  analysis.  They  run  across  each 
other,  lengthwise  and  breadthwise  of  time,  like  the  warp  and  woof 
of  a  tapestry,  across  which  the  complex  embroidery  of  literary  move- 
ments is  woven.  The  Zeitgeist  in  Pope's  day  was  that  of  the  age  of 
reason,  negative,  critical,  inculcating  good  taste  and  chilling  emotion. 
During  the  life  of  Gray,  the  inevitable  reaction  had  produced  an 
emotional  Zeitgeist,  the  harvest  of  which' was  sentimental  novels, 
lachrymose  comedies,  poetry  that  mourned  among  graveyards  or 
wailed  over  non-existent  kingdoms  of  Morven.  Then  came  the 
Zeitgeist  of  the  romantic  generation,  which  retained  much  of  this  ^ 
emotional  element,  but  fused  with  it  a  growing  intellectual  activity, 
the  positive  intellectual  curiosity  of  the  early  nineteenth  century, 
as  opposed  to  the  negative  intellectual  criticism  of  the  early  eight- 
eenth. That  too  had  its  day;  and  then  followed  the  age  of  Tennyson, 
more  chastened  in  its  enthusiasms,  more  mature  in  its  intellectual 
analysis,  more  tame  and  conventional  in  its  ideals. 

Across  these  far-reaching  variations  in  literary  attitude,  modify- 
ing them  and  being  modified  by  them,  run  any  number  of  literary 

[  295  ] 


^y 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

U  traditions.  There  is  the  tradition  of  Spenser,  which  can  be  traced 
without  a  break,  through  a  few  great  poems  and  innumerable  bad 
ones,  from  Pope's  ^'Alley"  to  Tennyson's  "Lotus-Eaters."  There  is 
the  tradition  of  the  neo-classic  couplet,  which  runs  from  Waller 
through  Pope,  and  through  innumerable  Pope  imitators,  to  die  on 
the  hands  of  Moore  and  Rogers  and  come  to  life  again  in  the  verse 
of  Austin  Dobson.  There  is  the  Miltonic  tradition,  which  involves 
most  of  the  blank  verse  in  the  eighteenth  century;  which  is  respon- 
sible for  many  a  dull  epic  that  should  have  been  entitled  "Poetic 
Inspiration  Lost";  which  trails  across  parts  of  "The  Excursion,"  and 
resumes  some  of  its  ancient  glory  in  "Hyperion."  There  is  the  great 
tradition  of  medievalism, — at  times  involved  with  the  Spenserian, 
but  often  separate, — which  first  became  prominent  with  the  Wartons 
and  has  gone  on  uninterruptedly  ever  since,  appearing  to-day  in 
novels  by  Maurice  Hewlett  and  poems  by  Alfred  Noyes.  There  are 
the  traditions  of  Dante  and  the  Elizabethan  drama  and  the  literature 
of  Greece,  all  negligible  in  the  eighteenth  century  but  prominent 
and  clearly  traceable  in  the  nineteenth. 

Now,  whatever  be  one's  definition  of  romanticism,  it  is  olwious 
that  differing  degrees  of  that  quality  will  be  iound  in  the  inherent 
natures  of  different  ^ets,  in  the  atmospheres  of  different  social 
groups,  in  the  dominant  influence  of  different  traditions,  and  in  the 
vprevailing  spirit  of  different  Zeitgeists.  When  one  considers  that 
three  or  four  of  these  forces  act  together  in  the  production  of  almost 
any  great  poem,  and  that  they  can  be  combined  in  varying  degrees 
and  in  an  astonishing  number  of  ways,  one  grows  rather  skeptical 
about  dividing  the  resulting  product  according  to  any  two  or  three 
categories.  Let  us  adopt  temporarily  a  conception  of  romanticism 
approximately  that  of  Mr.  Arthur  Symons  and  the  late  Mr.  Watts- 
Dunton.  Then  "Christabel"  was  the  product  of  a  romantic  soul 
following  a  romantic  tradition  among  a  mildly  romantic  group  in  a 
romantic  age,  and  comes  naturally  by  its  character  as  one  of  the 
most  romantic  of  poems.  Pope's  "Essay  on  Criticism,"  one  of  the 
most  neo-classic  of  English  masterpieces,  was  written  by  a  man  of 
neo-classic  temperament,  following  a  neo-classic  tradition,  in  a  neo- 
classic  age  and  in  an  unromantic  social  environment.  But  between 

[  296  ] 


ROMANTICISM,  CLASSICISM,  AND  REALISM 

these  two  extreme  poles  there  are  any  number  of  transitional  stages. 
The  early  eighteenth-century  Spenserians,  whose  romantic  qualities 
have  been  much  disputed,  followed  a  romantic  tradition  in  an  un- 
romantic  age.  Most  of  the  poetry  of  Rogers  reveals  a  neo-classic 
spirit  moving  among  a  partially  neo-classic  group,  writing  usually 
after  a  neo-classic  tradition  in  a  distinctly  unAugustan  period.  "The 
Excursion"  combines  some  of  the  virtues  of  Miltoi^  himself  and 
many  of  the  faults  of  his  dull  imitators  with  qualities  unknown  to 
both,  qualities  which  are  due  to  Wordsworth's  own  individuality 
or  to  the  mental  currents  of  his  day.  The  late  eighteenth-century 
imitators  of  Pope  followed  an  Augustan  tradition  in  a  sentimental 
period. 

The  four  forces  which  have  seemed  the  most  important  to  us  may 
not  seem  so  to  all,  and  are  obviously  not  the  only  ones  in  the  vast 
complexity  of  life.  They  do,  however,  represent  the  four  lines  along 
which  literary  historians  have  mainly  studied  romanticism.  The 
works  of  Professor  Beers  are  primarily  a  study  of  literary  tradi- 
tions, especially  the  great  medieval  tradition,  which  became  unques-  'y 
tionably  romantic  in  the  early  nineteenth  century,  doubtfully  so 
later  on  in  Kingsley's  "Saint's  Tragedy"  or  Reade's  "Cloister  and 
the  Hearth,"  and  clothed  with  the  old  glamour  in  still  more  recent 
work  by  Hewlett  and  William  Morris.  Arthur  Symons's  "Romantic  \/' 
Movement"  aims  primarily  at  a  study  of  the  author's  inherent 
nature.  "I  have  tried  to  get  at  one  thing  only,"  he  says  in  the 
Preface,  "the  poet  in  his  poetry,  his  poetry  in  the  poet."  The  nature 
of  the  ^prevailing  literary  spirit  in  Wordsworth's  day  has  been  the 
subject  of  various  essays  and  volumes,  which  have  found  the 
common  element  of  that  spirit  in  the  return  to  nature,  the  revival 
of  wonder,  the  love  of  solitude,  or  some  kindred  quality.  The  present 
book  has  attempted  to  supplement  these  works  by  a  study  of  the 
fourth  factor,  not  because  of  any  exaggerated  idea  as  to  its  influence, 
but  because  it  had  been  least  considered. 

That  the  four  factors  mentioned  exist  no  one  will  dispute.  Are 
they  all  among  the  deep  things  of  poetry  or  are  most  of  tiiem  only 
surface  currents,  ripples  a  few  inches  deep  on  an  unfathomable 
sea?  Mr.  Symons  would  incline  to  the  latter  belief,  and  says  causticly 

[  297  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

that  "critics  or  historians  of  poetry  are  generally  concerned  with 
everything  but  what  is  essential  in  it."  At  the  other  extreme  one 
finds  critics  like  Professor  Courthope,  Brunetiere,  and  the  late  M.  de 
Gourmont.  "Works  are  to  be  studied,  without  too  much  importance 
being  given  to  their  writers,  and  we  are  to  be  shown  how  these  works 
give  birth  to  one  another  by  natural  necessity;  how  from  the  species 
poetry  are  born  the  varieties  sonnet  and  madrigal;  how,  under  the 
influence  of  surroundings,  the  lyrical  variety  is  transformed,  without 
losing  its  essential  characteristics,  into  eloquence,  with  many  further 
metamorphoses."  Great  as  are  the  woes  which  neutrals  must 
undergo,  we  cannot  honestly  take  any  but  a  middle  ground.  We 
believe  with  Mr.  Symons  that  all  true  poetry  is  in  its  deepest  essence 
one  and  indivisible,  that  it  is  the  one  white  ray  of  light  from  an 
eternal  sun;  but  we  see  that  white  beam  only  through  the  stained 
glass  windows  which  prejudice  and  education  have  built  around  us, 
through  which  it  steals  in  half  a  hundred  differing  hues;  and  we 
cannot  believe  that  the  study  of  that  stained  window  through  which 
poetry  shines  discolored  on  the  kneeling  soul  is  as  trifling  as  the 
study  of  bygone  flounces  and  furbelows.  It  may  be  true  that  an 
ideally  perfect  literary  mind  would  find  in  all  genuine  poetry  of 
all  ages 

The  healing  of  the  seamless  dress. 

But  the  history  of  literature,  even  when  dealing  with  the  greatest 
poets  and  critics,  is  not  one  of  ideally  perfect  literary  minds.  That 
the  most  poetical  Englishmen  of  the  eighteenth  century  should 
have  had  their  eyes  blinded  to  the  grandeur  of  Dante,  that  the 
most  poetical  sons  of  France  for  two  hundred  years  should  have 
had  their  minds  poisoned  against  Shakespeare, — are  such  facts 
beneath  a  historian's  notice?  Or  take  those  influences  which  we 
have  just  enumerated.  When  an  enthusiastic  boy  poet  has 
finished  reading  "The  Faerie  Queene,"  "The  Castle  of  Indolence," 
"Adonais,"  and  "The  Lotus-Eaters,"  and  kindles  from  their  fire, 
is  it  so  unliterary  to  attribute  to  him  the  emotions  which  Keats  felt 
on  opening  Chapman's  "Homer,"  to  consider  his  connection  with 
the   Spenserian   tradition   a   notable    event?    When    Wordsworth 

[  298  ] 


ROMANTICISM,  CLASSICISM,  AND  REALISM 

declared  that  his  sister  gave  him  eyes  and  ears  for  the  poetry  of 
the  universe,  are  we  necessarily  unpoetical  in  tracing  the  influence 
of  associates  on  genius?  When  Scott  declared  that  he  would  die  if 
he  did  not  see  the  heather  once  a  year,  did  he  think  that  landscape 
influences  meant  nothing  to  a  literary  soul?  And  what  of  the  spirit 
of  the  age  ?  Is  it  not  the  chief  mark  of  a  true  poet  that  he  tries  to 
find  the  beautiful,  the  wonderful,  the  true  in  the  universe  around 
him?  Does  not  every  new  age  dig  up  some  new  treasures  of  thought 
and  feeling,  mixed  with  a  vast  mass  of  new  refuse  and  folly?  Is 
it  not  his  part  to  grasp  the  new  emotional  treasure  and  winnow  it 
free  from  its  accompanying  fads  and  errors  ?  And  is  there  not  often 
some  of  this  ephemeral  error  left  clinging  around  his  treasure, 
making  posterity  misjudge  him  unless  it  understands  the  field  in 
which  he  had  to  work?  Would  it  be  fair  to  Congreve  if  we  let  for- 
eigners read  his  plays  as  the  product  of  a  godly  age  or  to  ' 'Paradise 
Lost"  if  we  interpreted  it  as  the  product  of  nineteenth-century 
philosophy?  These  external  forces  exist  and  go  deep  into  poetry, 
though  there  may  be  other  things  deeper  still.  Of  the  four  forces, 
the  poet's  inborn  nature  perhaps  is  the  one  most  connected  with  his 
imperishable  work,  the  other  three  more  often  being  related  to 
superficial  qualities  or  ephemeral  successes.  It  by  no  means 
follows,  however,  that  this  field  is  the  most  profitable  for  the 
literary  historian.  In  such  matters  the  great  poet  is  often  his  own 
best  interpreter. 

Now  it  may  be  that  all  these  crossing  and  mixing  threads  represent 
only  two  kinds  of  mental  fiber,  variously  disguised;  that  a  whole- 
sale division  of  literature  into  two  or  three  categories  is  still 
possible.  Personally,  however,  we  cannot  feel  that  this  is  true;  nor 
do  we  think  that  our  generation  feels  so.  Every  one  recognizes  a 
certain  basic  unity,  not  in  all  good  poetry,  perhaps,  but  in  all  poetry 
the  goodness  of  which  he  really  appreciates.  Once  rise  above  that 
into  the  realm  of  more  superficial  divisions,  and  they  become,  not 
twofold  nor  threefold,  but  manifold.  It  is  true  that  in  any  particular 
period  these  many  literary  characteristics  will  often  be  found 
divided  into  two  camps;  but  the  line  of  division  between  the  two 
camps  keeps  changing  from  generation  to  generation.  The  simple 

[  299  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

elements  are  forever  being  re-sorted  into  new  combinations;  the 
new  group  adopts  devices  from  its  literary  ancestors  and  from  their 
enemies  as  well;  the  individual  poet  even  may  become  a  veritable 
Proteus,  true  perhaps  to  one  deity  but  repeatedly  changing  his  ritual 
of  worship.  As  the  great  political  parties,  the  Whigs  and  Tories,  the 
Republicans  and  Democrats,  under  unchanging  names  have  repre- 
sented ever  changing  policies,  so  "Romanticism,"  "Classicism,"  and 
"Realism,"  even  when  the  differences  between  them  have  been 
clearly  felt,  have  been  in  a  process  of  continual  transmutation.  As 
Macaulay  tells  us  that  the  Whig  and  Tory  parties  exchanged  parts, 
like  the  man  and  the  serpent  in  Malebolge,  so  the  "Romanticism" 
which  revolted  against  eighteenth-century  poetic  diction  has  been 
called  to  book  for  its  own  artificial  language  by  modern  realism. 

If  attempts  to  pigeonhole  the  literature  of  four  thousand  years 
and  a  hundred  peoples  prove  somewhat  unconvincing,  the  task  of 
distinguishing  between  great  literature  in  the  age  of  Pope  and  that 
in  the  age  of  Wordsworth  is,  on  the  contrary,  almost  too  easy.  The 
distinction  is  obvious,  and  already  so  well  known  that  it  needs  no 
further  discussion.  There  remains,  however,  a  ;fairly  important 
question:  Does  the  great  change  in  the  literary  product  represent 
a  corresponding  change  in  national  taste,  or  does  it  rather  represent 
a  change  in  the  representation  of  different  tastes  at  the  literary 
parliament?  Much  might  be  said  for  the  latter  theory.  The  fathers 
of  Coleridge  and  the  War  ton  brothers  showed  markedly  un- 
Augustan  tendencies  long  before  their  sons  blazed  the  new  trail. 
The  nineteenth-century  revival  began  in  regions  where  the  eight- 
eenth-century theories  had  never  borne  rich  harvests.  If  the  age  of 
Pope  left  us  only  one  type  of  enduring  poetry,  it  may  be  less  because 
all  poetic  spirits  thought  that  way  than  because  incipient  poets  of 
other  natures  were  forced  into  silence,  by  criticism,  by  economic 
pressure,  by  educational  conditions,  and  by  spiritual  starvation. 
Through  vast  tracts  of  Great  Britain  among  minds  full  of  latent 
poetry,  the  age  of  Queen  Anne  made  a  solitude  and  called  it  Taste. 

In  the  early  nineteenth  century,  on  the  contrary,  the  general 
atmosphere  encouraged  literature  of  many  types.  Even  those 
varieties  which  met  with  few  purchasers  and  hostile  reviews  felt 

[  300  ] 


ROMANTICISM,  CLASSICISM,  AND  REALISM 

in  the  air  a  breath  that  gave  them  life.  In  no  other  period  of  English 
literature  have  so  many  classes,  localities,  and  races  at  one  time 
been  represented  by  poets  of  distinction.  Their  birthplaces  and 
residences  dot  the  islands  of  Great  Britain  from  end  to  end  and 
from  side  to  side,  in  marked  contrast  with  both  the  Elizabethan  and 
Augustan  periods.  The  natural  result  was  that  the  spirit  of  the  age  "^x/ 
was  one  of  complexity  and  variety,  not  one  of  harmony  and  stand- 
ardization. The  common  intellectual  element  of  the  age  lay  in  its 
all-pervading  curiosity,  not  in  the  directions  along  which  that     ^ 
Quriosity  worked  nor  in  the  literary  credos  with  which  it  might  be 
connected.  This  curiosity  might  explore  the  monuments  of  the  past, 
the  hopes  of  the  future,  the  jiches  of  a  familiar  landscape,  or  the 
dim  vistas  and  picturesque  costumes  of  remote  countries;  working] 
along  these  diverging  lines  it  might  produce  types  of  literature  \  ^ 
differing  from  each  other  as  much  as  they  all  did  from  Pope;  it| 
remained  the  one  mental  link  which  bound  the  conservative  Scott  | 
to   the   revolutionary   Shelley,   the   domestic  Wordsworth   to   the  ^ 
wandering  Byron.  Emotionally  the  common  bond  was  in  general 
fulness  of  emotion  rather  than  in  the  fact  that  this  emotional  rich- 
ness was  always  of  the  same  kind.  Enthusiasm  was  considered  the 
mark  of  inspiration  where  it  had  once  been  the  mark  of  bad  taste; 
but  Wordsworth  did  not  share  Sir  Walter's  enthusiasm  for  border 
peels,  Southey  abhorred  the  revolutionary  enthusiasms  of  Shelley,    \ 
and  Byron  was  nauseated  by  the  early  heart's  outpourings  of  Keats. 
In  the  literature  of  the  age  the  unity — such  as  one  finds — was  the"  f  " 
unity-oL poetic  fgrvor.  not  the  supremacy  of  any  one  poetic  genus.    I 

Much  of  the  confusion  about  the  definitions  of  "romanticism"  is 
due  to  the  fact  that  the  same  word  has  been  used  to  label  ajiferary 
.type_and  a  literary  movement;  and  the  two  phenomena,  though" 
often  related,  are  fundamentally  distinct.  When  Vesuvius  burst  into 
eruption  and  overwhelmed  Pompeii,  the  eruption  was  one  definite 
thing;  but  the  chemical  constituents  of  the  lava  and  ashes  which  it 
ejected  were  numerous  and  varied.  Similarly  before  and  after  1800 
there  was  a  great  literary  eruption  throughout  western  Europe. 
There  is  no  reason  why  one  should  not  call  this  the  Romantic 
Movement,  if  one  wishes.  But  the  literature  which  it  poured  out 

[  301  ] 


^ 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

^  on  an  astonished  world  was  not  of  one  type  nor  two,  but  of 
many.  Fragments  were  in  it  of  the  old  neo-classical  peak  that  the 
eruption  had  blown  to  pieces,  dark  ash-clouds  of  Gothic  romance, 
metals  from  ancient  veins  unworked  for  centuries,  the  flowering 
turf  of  humble  realism,  and  wild  lavas  from  the  caverns  of  the 
mystic  far  underground.  If  "romanticism"  was  a  movement  it  in- 
volves a  study  of  many  literary  types  through  one  short  period  of 
their  development;  if  it  is  a  literary  type,  such  as  the  medieval 
verse  tale,  it  involves  a  study  of  that  type  reaching  across  several 
movements  but  forming  only  a  small  part  of  each.  Either  conception 
is  legitimate  in  itself,  but  the  two  fields  of  study  cannot  bear  the 
same  title  without  producing  confusion.  The  confusion  becomes 
worse  confounded  when  one  tries  to  overlay  these  two  conceptions 
with  a  third,  not  implied  in  them,  that  the  products  of  all  move- 
ments and  of  all  types  can  be  sorted  into  two  classes,  of  which  one 
is  and  the  other  is  not  romantic.  In  this  last  conception  our  age 
shows  little  faith.  Books  developing  the  other  two — however  we 
may  lament  the  confusion  of  terminology — ^have  proved  a  valuable 
addition  to  the  history  of  human  thoughts  and  ideals. 

One  last  question  may  be  thrown  out  for  future  thought,  though 
no  one  at  present  could  give  it  an  adequate  answer.  What  is  the 
relation  of  either  the  "romantic"  generation  or  "romantic"  tradi- 
tions to  mysticism?  There  is  a  half -proved,  plausible  theory  that 
waves  of  scientific,  realistic  thought  alternate  in  man's  history  with 
waves  of  mysticism,  periods  in  which  thousands  live  in  a  world  of 
their  own  emotions  and  visions  as  the  spider  in  a  universe  drawn 
from  his  own  bowels.  Unquestionably  there  was  a  great  deal  of 
mysticism  in  certain  periods  of  the  Middle  or  Dark  Ages  and  very 
little  in  the  early  eighteenth  century.  Was  the  romantic  generation 
a  reversion  to  this  attitude?  As  regards  the  German  Romantiker 
and  the  unpopular  English  poets,  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge,  Blake 
and  Shelley,  it  probably  was.  On  the  other  hand,  the  popular  English 
writers  and  the  public  whom  they  pleased  declared  themselves 
intolerant  of  this  very  element.  Like  the  mystic  they  sought  emo- 
tional experience;  but  unlike  him  they  wished  to  derive  it  from  a 
world  exterior  to  themselves,  from  a  genuine  past,  as  in  the  case  of 

[  302  ] 


ROMANTICISM,  CLASSICISM,  AND  REALISM 

Scott,  from  the  hard-headed  photography  of  Crabbe,  or  from 
observant  travel  as  in  the  case  of  Byron.  Stray  glimpses  of  another 
mood  may  flash  across  ^'Childe  Harold,"  but  they  are  only  transi- 
tory. Among  the  later  pre-Raphaelites  the  deep  mystic  feeling  of 
Christina  Rossetti  is  in  marked  contrast  with  tie  cheery  bustle  of 
William  Morris  the  man  or  with  the  sensuous  languor  of  his  verse. 
Poetry  that  is  usually  considered  romantic  and  that  betrays  occa- 
sional gleams  of  mysticism  is  combined  in  Tennyson  with  enthu- 
siasm for  a  great  scientific  age.  Wordsworth  was  at  once  more 
mystic  and  more  scientific  than  Byron. 

In  general,  literary  movements  do  not  run  exactly  parallel  to  the 
national  thought  wave  of  the  time,  but  vibrate  above,  below,  and 
around  it  like  overtones  in  music;  and  the  thought  wave  itself 
grows  ever  more  complex  with  the  increasing  complexity  of  life. 
Both  the  romantic  generation  and  the  medieval  tradition  have 
relations  to  mysticism;  but  they  are  not  identical  with  it,  and  the 
exact  nature  of  their  relationship  is  hard  to  grasp.  A  certain  type 
of  medieval  mysticism,  found  in  Blake  and  the  German  Baader, 
was  one  among  the  many  elements  hurled  up  by  the  great  literary 
eruption;  in  the  case  of  Wordsworth,  Shelley,  Christina  Rossetti, 
and  Francis  Thompson  the  problem  becomes  much  more  involved; 
and  even  Blake  was  much  more  than  a  mere  revival  of  Boehme. 


J 


[  303  ] 


CHAPTER  XIV 

The  Survival  of  the  Fittest 

The  tumult  and  the  shouting  dies, 
The  critics  and  the  schools  depart; — 

and  what  remains?  Not  always  that  which  the  age  had  expected  to 
see  endure;  not  always  what  was  most  representative  of  its  general 
temper;  not  always  those  works  of  even  the  greatest  poets  on  which 
they  had  most  set  their  hearts.  Is  it  always  even  that  which  most 
deserved  to  last?  We  hope  so,  but  in  common  honesty  we  must 
remember  how  much  conventional  cant  is  implied  in  that  phrase — 
the  verdict  of  posterity.  That  survives  which  is  best  fitted  to  endure 
in  an  existing,  not  necessarily  in  an  ideal  environment.  Moreover 
posterity,  like  other  supreme  tribunals,  feels  no  hesitation  in 
reversing  its  own  decisions,  and,  contrary  to  popular  belief,  is  con- 
tinually doing  so.  Measured  in  terms  of  actual  enthusiasm,  not  of 
hidebound  tradition,  the  reputations  of  Aeschylus,  Dante,  and 
Milton  go  waving  up  and  down  as  well  as  those  of  the  last  magazine 
favorite,  only  varying  at  such  high  altitudes  that  they  never  quite 
touch  oblivion.  Nothing  is  static;  nothing  is  firmly  settled;  and  the 
great  liners  as  well  as  the  little  cock-boats  rock  up  and  down  on 
the  restless,  ever  changing  hearts  of  men.  It  is  true  that  with  the 
passing  years  we  learn  more  of  the  facts  about  each  author,  the  veil 
of  misconception  and  partial  knowledge  is  removed;  but  the  veil 
of  divergent  tastes  remains  and  often  grows  more  impassable  as 
the  years  put  us  farther  and  farther  from  the  dead  man's  point  of 
view.  Our  knowledge  of  facts  improves  annually  as  the  bibliogra- 
phies enlarge;  but  in  matters  of  taste  what  right  have  we  to  con- 
sider ourselves  so  much  wiser  than  a  past  generation?  What  is  called 
the  verdict  of  posterity  to-day  is  really  in  part  the  verdict  of  the 

[  304  ] 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  THE  FITTEST 

twentieth  century  and  in  part  the  verdict  of  earlier  decades,  which 
the  twentieth  century  has  been  too  lazy  to  analyze.  Is  our  own  age 
so  much  more  discerning  in  matters  of  poetry  than  the  age  of  Words- 
worth,— especially  in  America?  Are  college  professors  to-day  more 
discerning  than  John  Wilson?  Are  the  contributors  to  The  Dial 
and  The  Nation  more  reliable  than  Southey,  Lamb,  and  De  Quincey? 
Above  all,  are  our  modern  poets  more  sound  in  their  esthetic  sense 
than  Coleridge  and  Keats?  There  is  a  certain  wisdom  which  comes 
from  the  mellowing  influence  of  time;  there  is  a  certain  advantage 
in  having  a  great  man  appeal  from  the  reading  multitude  to  the 
judgment  of  the  inner  circle;  there  is  a  wholesome  checking  influence 
which  each  generation  exercises  on  the  vagaries  of  the  others;  but 
at  best  this  verdict  of  posterity  is  unreliable  enough.  Yet,  such  as 
it  is,  we  give  it,  the  testimony  of  one  very  humble  and  fallible  man 
as  to  what  many  great  authors  meant  to  him  and  apparently  to 
his  age. 

Are  the  great  writers  alone  those  who  should  be  classed  among 
the  permanently  valuable?  In  our  opinion,  no.  Minors  are  of  many 
kinds,  hundreds  of  whom  should  be  dropped  through  the  sieve  of 
time,  but  a  few  retained.  There  are  grave  poetasters,  such  as 
Hayley,  who  would  bore  us  if  they  could,  but  shall  not.  There  are 
delightful  absurdities  of  the  type  of  George  Dyer,  who  lives  forever 
in  Lamb's  gentle  ridicule,  and  never  lived  in  his  verses.  There  are 
men  of  commanding  intellect  in  other  lines,  eighteenth-century 
doctors  and  clergymen  without  number,  who  have  turned  out  unin- 
spired verses  as  a  cultural  by-product.  All  of  these  may  be  profit- 
ably left  to  oblivion.  There  remains  another  type  whose  members 
the  present  writer,  for  one,  would  not  willingly  forget,  a  type  not 
comic  but  tragic,  and  appealing  through  neglected  stanzas  with  all 
the  sincerity  of  tragedy.  Such  a  man  was  John  Clare,  who,  without 
any  of  the  intellectual  massiveness  which  marks  a  great  poet,  yet 
gives  one  the  impression  of  a  remarkably  poetical  attitude  toward 
life,  and  makes  us  find  the  world  sweeter  and  better  because  a 
century  ago  he  pottered  here  among  his  meadow  flowers.  Such  a 
man  was  Beddoes,  the  victim  of  lifelong  melancholia,  who  impresses 
readers  and  impressed  himself  as  the  broken  torso  of  a  giant  that 

[  305  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

might  have  been.  However  imperfect  their  work,  the  generations 
would  be  poorer  without  it. 

Several  such  interesting  minors  can  be  found  in  Ireland.  In  that 
country  there  were  no  literary  groups  and  few  traditions;  her  sons 
were  groping  lonely  in  the  darkness;  but  there  was  a  literary  move- 
ment. After  the  sleep,  or  rather  the  stupefaction  of  centuries,  the 
national  muse  of  the  Irish  began  to  stir  uneasily  in  her  slumber; 
and  the  poetry  that  her  children  had  hitherto  produced  only  in 
England  began  to  be  audible  on  her  own  soil.  The  beginners  prob- 
ably had  more  poetry  in  their  hearts  than  they  have  left  us  on  paper. 
They  broke  against  an  iron  barrier,  and  too  often  took  to  drink  in 
despair.  Among  them  was  Dermody,  who  died  in  1802,  and  Callanan 
one  generation  later.  Their  verse  is  thin  and  limited  in  pitch,  but 
with  true  lyric  tears  and  laughter  in  it.  A  more  impressive  figure, 
because  better  balanced,  was  T.  C.  Croker.  In  Scott's  description 
of  him,  "little  as  a  dwarf,  keen-eyed  as  a  hawk,  and  of  easy,  pre- 
possessing manners,"  one  finds  small  kinship  with  the  broken  Celtic 
genius  of  the  Dermody,  Maginn,  and  Mangan  type.  His  prose 
"Fairy  Legends,"  published  in  1825,  were  translated  into  German 
by  the  Grimm  brothers,  with  whom  the  author  was  a  friendly 
correspondent;  and  several  parallels  to  Croker 's  Irish  tales  are 
found  in  the  continental  Marchen  of  the  Grimms.  Throughout  these 
"Fairy  Legends"  and  the  subsequent  "Legends  of  the  Lakes"  one 
revels  in  Celtic  love  for  the  unseen  mixed  with  Celtic  irreverence 
and  humor.  There  are  beautiful  visions  of  the  land  of  eternal  youth 
under  the  Killarney  Lakes,  grimly  grotesque  pictures  of  decapitated 
fairies  tossing  their  heads  about,  and  wild  incidents  which  the 
reader  may  at  discretion  attribute  to  either  the  devil  or  the  black 
bottle. 

In  turning  to  the  greater  names,  one  encounters  at  the  start  two 
writers  who  were  almost  ciphers  to  their  own  age,  who  had  no  part 
in  its  currents  and  eddies,  no  niche  in  its  long  reviews,  but  who 
have  outlived  the  perishable  glory  of  so  many  a  favorite,  and, 
without  a  place  in  earlier  chapters,  must  have  an  honorable  one 
here.  It  would  be  hard  to  imagine  a  more  isolated  figure  than  William 
Blake.  He  offered  the  public  while  he  was  still  a  young  man  certain 

[  306] 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  THE  FITTEST 

noble  lyrics  which  few  read,  fewer  understood,  and  nobody  dis- 
cussed. He  saw  Hayley,  Bloomfield,  Mrs.  Hemans,  Procter,  and 
"L.  E.  L."  hailed  as  authors  of  promise  while  he  was  ignored  as  a 
nobody.  During  his  creative  period  as  a  poet  he  came  in  touch  with 
no  other  great  author  of  his  age,  with  no  author  of  any  standing 
save  Hayley.  When  he  was  well  over  fifty  and  the  song  was  burnt 
out  of  him,  he  crossed  for  a  moment  the  lives  of  Lamb,  Southey, 
Coleridge,  and  Wordsworth,  roused  a  brief  spasm  of  enthusiasm  in 
some  of  them  by  his  poems,  and  seems  to  have  dropped  promptly  out 
of  their  minds.  Coleridge,  who  is  reported  to  have  sold  a  thousand 
copies  of  Cary^s  ''Dante"  by  a  single  lecture,  apparently  never 
mentioned  Blake's  name  in  public,  though  in  one  or  two  letters  he 
praised  highly  certain  lyrics,  including  "The  Tiger."  Leigh  Hunt, 
who  may  never  have  heard  of  Blake  as  a  poet,  printed  in  his 
Examiner  savage  attacks  on  Blake  the  artist,  calling  him  "an  un- 
fortunate lunatic,"  and  lamenting  his  "bad  drawings"  and  the 
"deformity  and  nonsense"  of  his  work.  This  great,  lonely  visionary 
died  at  the  age  of  seventy,  three  years  after  the  death  of  Byron, 
little  known  as  an  artist  and  almost  utterly  unknown  as  a  poet. 

Yet  the  history  of  his  mental  development  connects  in  many 
ways  with  the  currents  of  his  age,  much  more  so,  for  example,  than 
in  the  case  of  Landor.  His  first  volume,  "Poetical  Sketches,"  is  a 
cento  of  the  new  literary  tendencies  in  the  late  eighteenth  century. 
Influences  are  there  from  Thomson's  "Seasons,"  from  the  Spen- 
serians,  from  the  Elizabethan  revival,  from  Chatterton,  from  the 
Norse  translations  of  Gray,  from  the  Gothic  current,  and  from 
"Ossian."  In  his  later  and  more  mystical  work  he  diverges  far  from 
most  of  these  tendencies,  but  retains  unquestionable  links  of  thought 
with  that  age  which  knew  him  not.  His  chief  tie  is  through  his  dis- 
cipleship  to  Jacob  Boehme.  This  Austrian  shoemaker  and  visionary, 
a  belated  survival  of  the  medieval  mystics,  left  his  trail  across  most 
of  the  German  Romantiker,  his  influence  being  clearly  traceable 
in  Novalis,  in  Tieck,  in  Brentano,  and  in  a  minor  romantic  philoso- 
pher Baader,  who  devoted  years  to  the  study  and  elucidation  of 
his  writings.  Blake  resembled  Boehme,  and  in  part  at  least  imitated 
him,  in  general  mysticism,  in  many  details  of  poetic  symbolism,  and 

[  307  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

in  childlike  simplicity  of  language.  As  a  result  of  this  common 
derivation,  aided  more  or  less  by  likenesses  of  temperament,  there 
is  a  vague  similarity  between  some  of  Blake's  poetry  and  Novalis's 
"Henry  of  Ofterdingen,"  for  example.  Perhaps  a  common  debt  to 
some  form  of  German  mysticism  accounts  also  for  occasional  like- 
nesses between  Blake  and  Wordsworth.  Both  projected  great, 
rambling  epics  dealing  with 

the  Mind  of  Man — 
My  haunt,  and  the  main  region  of  my  song. 

in  both  there  is  often  an  attitude  toward  nature  similar  to  that 
voiced  by  the  German  romantic  painter  Runge:  "We  see  or  should 
see  in  every  flower  the  living  spirit  which  the  man  puts  into  it,  and 
through  that  the  landscape  will  come  into  being,  for  all  animals 
and  flowers  are  only  half  there,  as  soon  as  the  man  ceases  to 
furnish  the  chief  part.  .  .  .  When  thus  in  all  nature  we  see  only 
our  own  life,  then  first,  obviously,  the  right  landscape  is  bound  to 
result."  Certain  temperamental  likenesses  can  also  be  traced  between 
Blake  and  Shelley,  on  whom  no  common  external  force  appears  to 
have  acted,  likenesses  in  revolutionary  spirit,  in  abstractness,  in 
lyric  purity.  But  the  very  qualities  which  mark  Blake  as  in  some 
ways  a  child  of  his  age  are  those  for  which  his  age  ignored  him.  So, 
like  one  of  his  own  mythical  characters,  he  died  in  the  nineteenth 
century,  feeble  and  solitary,  to  come  to  life  in  the  twentieth,  a  giant 
in  perpetual  youth. 

Blake  to-day  is  the  victim  of  an  enemy  from  whom  he  was  least 
in  danger  in  his  own  day,  a  fad  of  overpraise;  and  regarding  some 
of  his  more  imperfect  work  both  enthusiasm  and  condemnation 
have  gone  wild.  None  the  less,  when  this  passing  vogue  is  over,  he 
will  still  endure.  He  was  blind  to  vast  tracts  of  experience,  knowl- 
edge, inspiration;  but  what  he  did  see  he  saw  through  a  glorified, 
poetic  atmosphere.  Reading  his  poems  is  like  being  on  a  mountain 
top:  first,  a  wild  exhilaration,  then  a  sense  of  giddiness  and  loneli- 
ness, of  the  absence  of  the  human  element,  a  longing  for  warm  fire- 
sides in  valleys  far  below.  For  this  reason,  few  people,  we  believe, 
will  ever  make  him  a  life  companion  as  they  do  Burns  and  Keats 

[  308  ] 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  THE  FITTEST 

and  the  greater  Shakespeare.  But  that  wild  and  transitory  exhilara- 
tion, however  unsatisfying  alone,  has  its  place  in  the  needs  of  a 
great  literature,  a  place  which  no  other  poet  has  filled  so  well. 
Blake  stands  also  for  the  triumph  of  poetic  faith,  a  proof  that  not 
poverty,  nor  neglect,  nor  hostility,  nor  the  shut-in  routine  of  poor 
laborers  in  cities  can  rob  a  man  of  artistic  vision  if  he  once  has  it 
in  his  soul.  In  some  respects  his  genius  had  even  more  to  overcome 
than  that  of  Burns,  who  lived  among  beautiful  landscapes  while  he 
moved  among  sidewalks  and  garrets.  But  the  divine  instinct  would 
not  down;  and  if  the  poetry  might  at  times  have  been  better  under 
more  favorable  conditions,  the  struggles  of  the  man  toward  his 
ideal  would  have  been  less  of  a  triumph  for  poetry. 

Not  quite  so  unpopular  as  Blake  but  equally  isolated  from  the 
literary  currents  of  her  age,  and  more  out  of  sympathy  with  its 
spirit  was  Jane  Austen.  "Considering  how  easily  the  heights  of 
celebrity  were  stormed  at  that  time,  and  especially  by  a  woman, 
it  is  most  remarkable  that  Jane  received  no  encouragement,  and 
had  no  literary  society,  and  not  one  literary  correspondent  in  the 
whole  of  her  lifetime."  That  is  the  testimony  of  one  biographer. 
According  to  another,  "there  is  no  evidence  in  the  memoirs  of  her 
time  that  any  distinguished  person  ever  found  himself  in  her  com- 
pany, her  name  did  not  appear  on  the  title  pages  of  any  books,  she 
was  almost  unknown  outside  of  a  small  provincial  circle,  and  in  that 
circle  no  one  seems  to  have  had  any  idea  that  there  was  anything 
specially  remarkable  about  her."  When  it  was  proposed  that  she 
should  attempt  an  historical  romance  she  wrote  back:  "I  am  fully 
sensible  that  (such  a  romance)  might  be  much  more  to  the  purpose 
of  profit  or  popularity  thanTuch  pictures  of  domestic  life  in  country 
villages  as  I  deal  in.  But  I  could  no  more  write  a  romance  than 
an  epic  poem.  I  could  not  sit  seriously  down  to  write  a  serious 
romance  under  any  other  motive  than  to  save  my  life;  and  if  it 
were  indispensable  for  me  to  keep  it  up  and  never  relax  into  laugh- 
ing at  myself  or  at  any  other  people,  I  am  sure  I  should  be  hung 
before  I  had  finished  the  first  chapter.  No,  I  must  keep  to  my  own 
style  and  go  on  in  my  own  way;  and  though  I  may  never  succeed 
again  in  that,  I  am  convinced  that  I  should  totally  fail  in  any  other." 

[  309  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

Most  of  her  life  was  passed,  and  nearly  all  her  writing  done,  in  the 
quiet  little  Hampshire  villages  of  Steven  ton  and  Chawton.  As  Blake 
worked  on  calmly  irrfei&4sle  of  dreams,  mystic  and  idealist  amid  the 
turbid  currents  of  dem^i^  neo-classicism,  so  she  went  her  un- 
troubled way  in  her  littl^;_jrfovincial  world,  while  medieval  and 
Oriental  and  Wertherish'  romance  ra^ecj  unheeded  without.  Being 
a  great  reader,  she  caught  trough  -books  many  glimpses  of  the 
changes  in  contemporary  lifepbut  her  immediate  environment  was 
a  little  unprogressive  h^ck  eddy  of  thought,  and  she  found  therein 
something  more  cong^ial  than  the  wild  rush  of  the  new. 

Though  the  French  Revolution  had  turned  so  many  other  eyes 
on  the  condition  of  the  poor.  Miss  Austen  ignores  them  with  gentle 
ladylike  conservativeness.  All  her  heroes  and  heroines  are  from  the 
respectable  middle  class.  White  Napoleon  was  ruminating  an  inva- 
sion of  England  from  Boulogne,  she  was  poking  fun  at  Ann  Rad- 
cliffe  in  "Northanger  Abbey."  The  W eltschmerz~QSr^RQL>%rt2X  French 
contemporary  George  Sand  would  probably  haiie-made  her  open 
mild  eyes  of  wonder  if  she  had  lived-4Q^ad  it.  Why  should  one  be 
so  unhappy  in  a  world  where  there  were  always  pleasant  dances 
to  go  to,  and  foolish  people  to  laugh  at,  and  pretty  dresses,  and 
jewelry — and  husbands — and  other  objects  of  virtu ,  i^ithe  acquire- 
ment of  which  one  could  show  one's  ingenuity,  and  in  the  selection 
of  which  one  could  show  one's  taste?  Hers  was  in  many  ways  an 
Augustan  type  of  mind,  femininely  Augustan;  and  in  that  gentle, 
poHshed,  yet  trenchant  face  we  seem  ^       ^v^   _ 

to  feel 
The  Ruffle's  Flutter  and  the  Flash  of  Steel. 

Miss  Austen's  favorite  poet  was  Crabbe;  and  although  he  was 
a  popular  writer  and  she  an  unpopular  one,  in  some  ways  he  also 
was  an  isolated  figure.  After  his  wife's  death  in  1813  he  became 
acquainted  with  various  literary  men,  including  Rogers,  and  in 
1822  he  visited  Scott,  with  whom  he  had  been  for  years  in  friendly 
correspondence.  But  up  to  his  sixtieth  year,  during  all  his  best 
creative  period,  he  had  been  a  lonely  figure,  utterly  out  of  personal 
contact  with  the  great  writers  of  the  time.  How  far  this  affected 

[  310  ] 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  THE  FITTEST 

his  style  we  cannot  know;  his  natural  limitations  were  very  marked; 
he  had  been  fifteen  years  old  when  Wordsworth  was  born  and  had 
formed  his  taste  in  a  bygone  age.  Yet  the  best  realistic  work  of  the 
period,  that  of  Maria  Edgeworth,  Jane  Austen,  and  Crabbe,  was 
produced  in  literary  isolation;  and  the  most  realistic  of  Words- 
worth's poetry  was  the  outcome  of  his  most  solitary  days.  Before 
1820  the  tendency  of  the  literar)^ groups  was  away  from  downright 
contemporary  realism.  This  insulated  and  uneventful  existence  no 
doubt  encouraged,  though  it  obviously  could  not  wholly  have  caused, 
the  fatal  lack  of  versatility  in  Crabbe,  for  whom  there  was  only  one 
metre  that  he  could  handle,  only  one  social  class,  and  only  one 
mood.  The  relation  of  his  complete  poems  to  his  first  triumph,  "The 
Village,"  is  the  relation  of  an  elongated  telescope  to  a  telescope 
shut  together;  the  complete  works  are  longer,  but  contain  no  poetical 
appeal  that  was  not  at  first  in  the  early  poem.  It  is  true  that  with 
advancing  years  "the  crab-apple  softened";  but  it  is  a  question  if 
this  increasing  mildness  did  not  weaken  a  poet  whose  stern  veracity 
was  his  only  stock  in  trade. 

How  far  Crabbe  at  times  tried  other  literary  veins  we  do  not 
know.  During  his  twenty-year  silence  he  wrote  much  which  the 
unfavorable  comment  of  friends  led  him  to  destroy.  Whether  the 
consumed  manuscripts  were  inferior  Parish  Registers  or  abortive 
ballads  and  Gothic  romances,  his  friends  have  neglected  to  state. 
"Sir  Eustace  Grey,"  written  somewhere  during  this  interval,  in 
metre,  wildness,  and  love  of  the  morbid  differs  noticeably  from  the 
earlier  and  later  poems,  though  this  also  can  be  considered  as  a 
realistic  scene  in  a  madhouse. 

Byron  bracketed  Crabbe  with  Rogers  and  Campbell  as  the  three 
men  who  had  remained  true  to  the  Pope  gospel;  and  in  his  last  years 
the  aged  clergyman  visited  his  fellow  spirits  occasionally,  but  their 
intercourse,  never  very  frequent,  began  too  late  to  account  in  any 
way  for  common  elements  in  their  verse.  Moreover,  their  likenesses 
were  rather  in  details  than  in  spirit;  Rogers's  world  of  elegant 
bric-a-brac  was  far  enough  from  the  harsh  materials  of  which  "The 
Borough"  was  compounded.  Perhaps  the  cordial  welcome  which 
Crabbe  received  from  his  public  could  be  explained  by  his  unlikeness 

[  311  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

to  all  contemporary  poets;  in  their  romantic  feast  he  was  the 
pinch  of  salt  which,  unpalatable  in  itself,  made  the  whole  mixture 
palatable. 

We  prefer  to  think  of  Burns  as  lying  on  the  border  of  our  field; 
yet  much  of  his  best  poetry,  including  "Tam  O'Shanter"  and  "The 
Jolly  Beggars,"  was  written  after  1790;  and  a  word  must  be  granted 
him.  Like  Crabbe  he  was  a  poj5ular  but  isolated  figure;  unlike 
Crabbe  he  belonged  to  no  great  literary  tradition,  but  was  the  giant 
of  a  puny  race,  following  paths  blazed  by  almost  forgotten  poets. 
The  trail  of  his  imitators  is  even  more  obscure  than  the  trail  of  his 
predecessors.  Though  his  lyrics  marked  the  sunrise  of  a  great  lyrical 
period,  his  songs  have  little  in  common  with  those  of  his  chief  fol- 
lowers except  the  pure  singing  quality.  The  song  poetry  of  Shelley, 
Wordsworth,  Scott,  Blake,  and  even  Moore  deals  only  incidentally 
with 

Praise  of  love  or  wine, 

which  were  the  chief  themes  of  Burns,  as  they  had  been  those  of  the 
Elizabethans.  Unlike  the  learned  authors  of  his  time,  he  had  few 
theories  about  either  literature  or  politics;  and  those  which  he  had 
were  borrowed  and  often  bad.  If  he  helped  blaze  the  way  of  reform, 
it  was  not  because  he  bore  the  torch  of  new  traditions,  but  partly 
because  poverty  and  the  green  fields  had  insulated  him  from  old 
traditions  that  were  decadent,  partly  because  the  new  enthusiasm 
in  the  air  made  his  public  give  the  encouragement  which  would  not 
have  come  twenty  years  before. 

His  work  is  imperfect  enough  often.  There  were  callous  spots  in 
his  brain  as  there  were  in  his  hands,  and  produced  by  similar  causes. 
But  though  one  finds  imperfect  taste  in  him  often  enough,  one 
almost  never  finds  the  perverted  taste,  the  doctrinaire  wrongheaded- 
ness,  which  wrecked  so  much  in  the  pages  of  Wordsworth  and  Blake, 
Sou  they  and  Byron.  There  is  a  wholesome  sanity  about  this  product 
of  the  furrow  and  the  meadow,  a  healthy  good  sense,  which  is  not 
identical  with  culture  yet  goes  far  toward  taking  the  place  of  it. 
He  may  often  disappoint,  but  he  never  bores  or  antagonizes.  And 

[  312  ] 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  THE  FITTEST 

when  he  is  at  his  best,  he  leads  us,  not  among  the  pupils  of  Rousseau, 
nor  to 

Pope  or  Steele 
Or  Beattie's  wark, 

but  back  to  the  golden  age  among  the  fields  of  Saturn. 

There  remain  those  great  writers  who  have  already  been  dis- 
cussed at  length,  Scott  and  Byron,  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge, 
Keats  and  Shelley,  with  perhaps  Hogg  and  Campbell  and  Moore 
for  those  who  like  them.  Are  these  men  to  remain  indefinitely  where 
the  late  nineteenth  century  placed  them,  and  if  so,  what  part  of 
their  work  will  best  endure?  On  Byron  the  Nemesis  which  follows 
popularity  has  laid  a  heavy  hand;  his  warmest  admirers  now  are 
foreigners;  and  admiration  for  him  varies  inversely  as  the  power 
to  understand  the  language  in  which  he  wrote.  The  beauty  cult 
which  has  been  derived  from  Keats  has  run  into  decadent  extremes 
and  produced  a  reaction;  but  that  reaction  has  not  yet  lowered  our 
estimate  for  the  author  of  "Hyperion"  himself.  Toward  Words- 
worth there  is  rapt  adoration  in  some  quarters  and  aggressive 
hostility  in  others,  even  as  there  was  in  his  own  day. 

The  late  nineteenth  century,  after  the  enthusiasm  about  Tenny- 
son's "Idylls"  had  subsided,  laid  undue  emphasis  on  the  short  lyric 
as  compared  with  other  types  of  poetry,  and  winnowed  with  the 
greatest  care  the  literature  which  it  loved.  The  verdict  of  its 
anthologies  on  what  was  good  or  bad  in  the  song  poetry  of  the 
romantic  period  may  be  accepted  as  approximately  final.  The  longer 
poems  offer  a  more  troublesome  problem.  The  early  nineteenth 
century  wrote  them  hastily  in  an  age  which  was  careless  about  the 
technique  of  long  poems;  the  critics  of  1900  judged  them  blindly 
in  an  age  which  felt  only  imperfectly  the  peculiar  charm  of  long 
poems.  Now  the  twentieth  century  halts  before  these  inspired  but 
inchoate  rhapsodies,  puzzled  and  confused,  feeling  that  they  con- 
tain much  which  we  would  not  willingly  let  die,  yet  contain  it  in  a 
form  which  we  would  not  have  chosen.  "Mazeppa"  and  "The 
Prelude,"  "The  Revolt  of  Islam"  and  "Endymion,"  Blake's  "Vala" 
and  Southey's  "Thalaba,"  how  gladly  would  we  throw  them  away 
if  we  could  find  all  their  beauty  and  suggestion  in  more  condensed 

[  313  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

form  elsewhere;  how  certain  we  are  that  this  is  not  the  case!  If 
some  future  writer  should  give  us  their  inspiration  fused  and  puri- 
fied, made  lucid  and  condensed,  would  they  not  automatically  drop 
out  of  literature  as  the  flintlock  has  dropped  out  of  our  arsenals? 
But  until  that  day  comes  there  will  be  men  who  will  read  them  for 
something  which  cannot  be  found  elsewhere.  A  long  poem  is  like 
a  large  country.  The  extent  of  its  territory  enables  one  to  ramble 
farther  and  farther  from  the  frontiers  of  Philistinism,  until  he  comes 
at  last  into  peaceful  midland  regions  where  anxiety  is  forgotten  and 
the  language  of  sordid  borderlands  is  a  tongue  unknown.  For  the 
sake  of  that  atmosphere  one  might  forget  some  faults. 

About  Wordsworth  there  is  something  which  reminds  one  of 
science.  His  face  in  his  old  age  came  to  look  like  geological  strata. 
His  poems,  like  the  rock-ribbed  hills,  grow  picturesque  and  at- 
tractive only  when  they  have  been  denuded  by  torrents  of  criticism. 
In  a  deeper  way,  however,  his  attitude  toward  life  approximated 
that  of  the  scientist;  and  this  accounts  for  many  of  the  virtues  and 
the  faults  in  his  poetry.  A  great  chemist  or  physicist,  in  his  eager 
search  for  some  new  truth,  may  grow  at  once  inspired  and  unsocial. 
The  life  of  Wordsworth  was  a  search  for  abstract  truth;  but  he 
loved  that  abstract  ideal  more  than  he  did  men.  He  became  at  the 
same  time  an  inspired  experimenter  in  the  field  of  vision,  and  a 
harsh,  tactless,  antagonizing  fellow  mortal.  He  made  his  life  a  great 
experiment  in  the  attempt  to  reconcile  poetry  and  moral  phi- 
losophy; he  made  his  poems  a  record  of  his  laboratory  researches; 
and  the  hardness  and  bareness  of  a  scientific  report  is  in  many  of 
them,  yet  the  essence  of  truth  is  there  too.  It  was  probably  this 
quality  which  attracted  John  Stuart  Mill  to  his  poems,  yet  made 
Mill  believe  that  they  were  best  adapted  for  unpoetical  minds. 

Keats,  on  the  contrary,  is  par  excellence  the  poet  of  art.  The 
attitude  of  the  scientist  toward  truth  is  to  him  incomprehensible. 

Beauty  is  truth,  truth  beauty;  that  is  all 
We  know  on  earth,  and  all  we  need  to  know. 

As  an  artist  he  had  far  greater  power  of  improvement  than  Words- 
worth in  technique  and  form.  He  grasped  a  simpler  problem,  and, 

[314  ] 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  THE  FITTEST 

had  he  lived,  would  have  given  it  far  more  perfect  expression. 
Because  he  loved  men  and  Grecian  urns  better  than  abstract  prin- 
ciples, he  was  a  more  lovable  man  and  a  more  poetical  poet  than 
the  sage  of  Rydal;  yet  for  that  very  reason  he  is  a  less  powerful 
figure  in  the  mental  history  of  his  country.  His  poetry  was  good, 
but  his  imitators  have  too  often  been  bad;  and  he  may  yet  come, 
like  Pope,  to  be  unjustly  depreciated  because  of  the  tradition  that 
he  founded.  None  the  less  we  believe  that  the  ages  will  finally 
pronounce  him  potentially,  though  not  in  actual  performance,  the 
greatest  poet  of  his  day,  the  one  ever  improving  artist  of  his  time 
who  out  of  errors,  follies,  and  morbidities  trodden  under  foot  was 
building  a  St.  Augustine's  ladder  to  the  stars. 

Keats,  with  a  keen  and  critical  mind,  chose  to  live  in  the  world 
of  emotions.  Shelley,  with  a  remarkably  poetic  temperament  and 
an  incoherent  intellect,  vainly  attempted  to  live  in  the  world  of 
reason.  His  philosophy  is  a  fog,  his  moral  code  a  mirage,  dim  vapors 
from  the  Godwinian  fen  wrapped  in  sunset  glory  from  the  radiance 
of  his  emotional  life.  It  is  as  the  singer  of  poetic  moods  that  he 
will  endure.  His  intellect  was  morbid  and  half-mad  where  that  of 
Keats  was  healthy  and  keen;  but  his  moods  were  rich  and  splendid, 
whether  wholesome  and  happy  or  melancholy  and  diseased.  In  no 
other  writer  of  his  time  is  tie  music  of  poetic  emotion  so  free  from 
jarring  discords,  even  where  it  says  nothing  and  gets  nowhere. 

Byron,  if  he  endures,  must  endure  as  the  poet  of  energy, — intel- 
lectual energy  in  observation,  emotional  energy  in  passion.  He  has 
no  other  valid  claim.  Despite  occasional  magnificent  passages,  he 
has  neither  the  ear  nor  the  conscience  of  an  artist.  He  was  not  a 
noble  man,  and  all  attempts  to  whitewash  him  are  doomed  to  failure. 
If  we  are  to  admire  him  at  all  we  must  admire  him  as  we  do  the 
volcano  and  the  panther,  a  mad,  destructive  force  that  is  inimical 
to  peace,  beauty,  and  morality,  but  that  awes  through  its  wild  out- 
pouring of  power;  or  in  satire  we  must  consider  him  as  an  intel- 
lectual conflagration  at  once  destroying  and  cleansing  a  plague- 
stricken  London.  Mazeppa's  horse  foams  through  the  torrent;  the 
thunder  rattles  among  the  Alps;  Lucifer  defies  the  Almighty;  the 
forests  of  a  dying  world  blaze  through  the  gathering  blackness,  and 

[  315  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

the  mocker  of  "Don  Juan"  exclaims  in  a  tone  not  that  of  the 
Psalmist,  "What  is  man,  that  Thou  art  mindful  of  him?"  One  might 
compare  Byron  to  Blake's  tiger,  and  exclaim,  half  in  jest,  half  in 
bitter  earnest, 

Did  He  who  made  Charles  Lamb  make  thee? 

Only  the  experience  of  modern  hunters  has  shown  that  the  tiger  is 
often  a  bluffing  coward;  and  one  wonders  if  under  the  fury  and 
thunder  of  Byron  there  was  not  as  much  weakness  as  power.  The 
continent  of  Europe  still  believes  in  him;  but  the  continent  until 
recently  believed  in  "Ossian." 

Though  the  poems  of  Scott  do  not  reach  the  highest  level,  we 
have  already  recorded  our  faith  in  their  permanence.  Still  more  are 
we  certain  that  the  Waverley  novels  will  endure.  Careless  construc- 
tion, bungling  sentences,  sins  of  inaccuracy  against  history  and 
human  nature — all  these  may  be  there;  but  behind  them  one  finds 
so  much  that  is  genuinely  human  or  brilliantly  picturesque,  the 
delight  in  a  good  story,  the  sense  of  riches  infinite.  After  all,  has 
not  imagination  in  our  own  day  been  bound  down  too  strictly  on  the 
Procrustes  bed  of  accuracy,  and  is  it  not  good  to  see  her  in  un- 
spoiled vitality  on  her  native  heather? 

Aside  from  the  survival  of  individual  poets  and  poems,  how  much 
of  the  romantic  generation  itself  is  going  to  survive,  of  its  thought, 
of  its  attitude  toward  life?  To  our  scientific,  systematized  age  much 
of  that  solitary,  introspective  dreaming  seems  remote  enough;  and 
many  of  those  early  theories  are  considered  as  exploded.  Yet  before 
hasty  generalizations  are  made,  two  facts  must  be  remembered. 
By  the  law  of  action  and  reaction  we  have  rebounded  from  the  early 
nineteenth-century  point  of  view,  and  tend  to  hold  certain  aspects 
of  it  more  visionary  than  they  may  seem  to  our  grandchildren.  The 
precise  combination  represented  by  the  "romantic  generation"  will 
never  come  back,  but  many  of  its  elements  will  recur  in  new  dis- 
guises; and  movements,  like  people,  however  they  may  differ  from 
their  grandparents,  will  develop  unexpected  points  of  sympathy 
with  the  dead.  Even  while  we  are  writing,  the  triumphs  of  ma- 
chinery and  system  may  be  proving  that  machinery  and  system 

[  316  ] 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  THE  FITTEST 

have  no  right  to  triumph;  and  in  the  age  of  submarines  and  iron 
order  the  mysticism  of  Blake  may  prove  a  rock  of  refuge  in  a 
weary  land. 

Equally  important  is  another  consideration  that  is  too  often  over- 
looked; namely,  that  many  theories  of  the  past  have  a  deep  emo- 
tional truth  under  a  thin  veil  of  literal  inaccuracy.  For  instance, 
the  romantic  generation  showed  a  tendency  to  deify  childhood. 
The  schools  and  psychological  laboratories  of  the  twentieth  century 
retort  that  children  are  little  animals;  that  instead  of  trailing  clouds 
of  splendor  from  God  they  live  to  eat  and  squabble.  True  enough — 
of  the  children  known  to  those  schools  and  laboratories.  But  Words- 
worth, Coleridge,  Blake,  and  Lamb,  when  they  wrote  of  children, 
were  thinking  of  themselves.  Their  statements  were  true  as  de- 
scriptions of  the  infant  poet,  however  inaccurately  expanded  to 
include  infant  financiers.  The  history  of  a  poet's  life  from  cradle 
to  grave  is  a  history  of  gradual  compromises  between  a  poetic  spirit 
and  a  prosaic  world,  a  gradual  lowering  of  his  thought  in  the  locks 
of  speech  that  it  may  enter  the  world's  mental  canals  at  sea-level. 
If  he  turns  back  to  the  days  when  there  was  no  leveling  because 
no  communication,  when  he  looked  into  other  children's  faces  and 
did  not  know  their  minds  different  from  his  own — is  he  not  develop- 
ing a  very  legitimate  form  of  poetic  truth?  The  letters  and  journals 
of  literary  men,  examined  with  the  most  scientific  accuracy,  do 
indicate  a  poetical  and  charming  mental  world  in  childhood;  and 
what  these  writers  painted  was  a  beautiful  truth,  only  with  a  wrong 
label  stuck  in  the  corner.  A  similar  rightness  of  emotional  feeling, 
however  obscured  by  superficial  fallacies,  lay  underneath  the  love 
of  retirement,  of  individualism,  of  subjective  thought.  Our  own  age 
has  gone  to  the  opposite  extreme,  and  has  produced — German 
Kultur.  By  their  fruits  ye  shall  know  them. 

The  early  nineteenth  century  was,  let  it  be  granted,  an  intoxicated, 
erratic,  faulty  age.  But  it  was  intoxicated  with  noble  thoughts,  it 
erred  in  the  pursuit  of  high  ideals,  and  its  faults  will  not  hide  from 
posterity  the  greatness  of  its  virtues.  It  survived  the  criticism  of  its 
own  day;  it  has  survived  the  world-racking  changes  of  more  recent 
days;  and  it  will  continue  to  endure.  At  the  present  time  among 

[317] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

many  of  our  young  poets  there  is  a  seeming  reaction  against  the 
great  writers  of  that  period,  but  this  reaction  is  a  wholesome  sign 
for  both  the  living  and  the  dead.  It  is  not  at  bottom  an  attempt  to 
depreciate  bygone  masters,  but  an  attempt  to  check  a  slavish 
tradition  derived  from  them.  They  also  warred  against  the  Pope 
imitators,  but  Pope  himself  they  did  not  kill;  and  a  greater  than 
Pope  is  here. 


[318  ] 


SOURCES  AND  AUTHORITIES 

Titles  when  mentioned  the  first  time  are  given  in  full  with  dates.  When 
repeated  later,  they  are  usually  abbreviated. 

INTRODUCTION 

The  Prose  Works  of  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley,  ed.  by  H.  B.  Forman  (1880), 

IV,  206. 
Byron's  Don  Juan,  IV,  Iv. 

Letters  of  the  Wordsworth  Family,  ed.  by  W.  Knight  (1907),  I,  208. 
The  Correspondence  of  William  Cowper,  arranged,  etc.,  by  T.  Wright 

(1904),  IV,  77. 

CHAPTER  I 

Lamartine,  Meditations  Poetiques,  nouvelle  edition,  par  G.  Lanson  (191 5), 

I,  Ixxxvi. 
A  Survey  of  English  Literature,  1 780-1830,  by  O.  Elton  (1912),  I,  74, 

75,  44,  32,  37- 
Diet,  of  Nat.  Biog.:   Charlotte  Smith,  William  Hayley,  Anna  Seward, 

William  Gifford. 
Elegiac  Sonnets,  and  Other  Poems,  by  Charlotte  Smith,  9th  ed.  (1800), 

Sonnet  xxii. 
Sonnets  and  Other  Poems,  by  W.  L.  Bowles,  8th  ed.  (1802),  Sonnet  xx. 
Poems  by  S.  T.  Coleridge,  2d  ed.  (1797),  p.  71. 
Diary,  Reminiscences,  and  Correspondence  of  Henry  Crabb  Robinson, 

ed.  by  Thomas  Sadler,  2d  ed.  (1869),  I,  381,  58. 
Wright's  Correspondence  of  William  Cowper,  IV,  78. 
The  Emigrants,  A  Poem,  by  Charlotte  Smith  (1793),  p.  ix. 
Letters  of  Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge,  ed.  by  E.  H.  Coleridge  (1895),  I,  221- 

222,  96,  403. 
Poems  and  Plays  by  William  Hayley  (1785),  III,  76. 
Memoirs  of  the  Life  and  Writings  of  William  Hayley,  ed.  by  John 

Johnson  (1823),  I,  207. 

[  319  ] 


r^ 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

The  Life  of  Mary  Russell  Mitford,  by  A.  G.  L'Estrange  (1870),  I,  154. 
Louisa,  a  Poetical  Romance,  by  Miss  Seward,  5th  ed..  New  Haven  (1789), 

Preface  and  p.  13. 
The  Poetical  Works  of  Robert  Southey,  ten  vols.  (1838),  I,  xxx. 
Charles  Lamb  and  the  Lloyds,  ed.  by  E.  V.  Lucas  (1898),  p.  18-3. 
The  Poetical  Works  of  Erasmus  Darwin  (1806),  II,  15;  III,  21. 
Memoirs  of  the  Life  of  Sir  Walter  Scott,  by  J.  G.  Lockhart  (Riverside 

Pressed.),  I,  235,  274. 
The  RoUiad  (1795),  pp.  79,  i. 

A  History  of  English  Poetry,  by  W.  J.  Courthope  (1910),  VI,  127-132. 
De  Quincey's  Works,  author's  ed.  (1863),  XIII,  52. 
The  Shade  of  Alexander  Pope,  etc.,  3d  ed.  (1799),  pp.  36,  51. 
The  Farmer's  Boy,  by  Robert  Bloomfield,  15th  ed.  (1827),  pp.  xxx,  33. 
The  Early  Life  of  Samuel  Rogers,  by  P.  W.  Clayden  (1888),  pp.  189, 

209,  97. 
Rogers  and  His  Contemporaries,  by  P.  W.  Clayden  (1889),  I,  122,  49. 
Life  and  Letters  of  Thomas  Campbell,  ed.  by  W.  Beattie  (1850),  I,  225, 

93,  165,  188,  222. 
Recollections  of  the  Table-Talk  of  Samuel  Rogers,  3d  ed.   (1856),  pp. 

255,41. 
Life  and  Writings  of  Mrs.  Radcliffe,  prefixed  to  her  Gaston  de  Blonde- 

ville,  p.  12. 
A  History  of  English  Romanticism  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  by  H.  A. 

Beers  (1898),  pp.  254,  409,  413. 
Memoirs,  Journal,  and  Correspondence  of  Thomas  Moore,  ed.  by  the 

Right  Hon.  Lord  John  Russell  (1857),  I»  26,  50. 
Byron's  Childe  Harold,  IV,  xviii. 

Bryan  Waller  Procter,  etc.,  by  C.  P.  [Coventry  Patmore]   (1877),  P-  3i- 
Leigh  Hunt,  by  C.  Kent  (1889),  p.  202. 
Knight's  Letters  of  the  Wordsworth  Family,  I,  509. 
Leigh  Hunt's  Blue-Stocking  Revels. 
Mrs.  Radcliffe's  Italian  (ed.  of  1797),  I>  165;  II,  152. 
Kotzebue  in  England,  by  Walter  Sellier,  University  of  Leipsic  dissertation 

(1901),  especially  pp.  5-7. 
Preface  to  ed.  of  Schiller's  Robbers,  etc.,  in  Bohn's  Standard  Library 

(1881).  (Partly  verified  from  more  original  sources.) 
The  Life  and  Correspondence  of  the  Late  Robert  Southey,  ed.  by  C.  C. 

Southey  (1849),  I?  287. 

[  320  ] 


SOURCES  AND  AUTHORITIES 

The  Collected  Works  of  William  Hazlitt,  ed.  by  A.  R.  Waller  and  A. 

Glover  (1902),  V,  362. 
William  Wordsworth,  by  G.  M.  Harper  (1916),  I,  263. 
Walter  Scott^s  Advertisement  to  his  House  of  Aspen  (pub.  1829). 

CHAPTER  II 

Life  and  Correspondence  of  Robert  Southey,  II,  46;  I,  210;  I,  224;  I,  216; 

I,  211;  I,  217;  I,  259-260;  III,  41;  VI,  193;  I,  178,  180;  I,  319; 

I,  287;  I,  338;  I,  325;  III,  136;  II,  134;  I,  248;  II,  16;  III,  138. 
Reminiscences   of  Samuel   Taylor   Coleridge   and   Robert   Southey,   by 

Joseph  Cottle  (1847  Am.  ed.),  pp.  8,  134,  13,  14. 
Lucas's  Charles  Lamb  and  the  Lloyds,  pp.  35,  41. 
Blank  Verse  by  Charles  Lloyd  and  Charles  Lamb  (1798),  pp.  5,  75,  12, 

48,  61,  84. 
Knight's  Letters  of  the  Wordsworth  Family,  I,  106;  I,  125;  I,  115;  I,  68; 

I,  28;  I,  79;  III,  121. 
William  Hazlitt,  by  A.  Birrell  (1902),  pp.  47,  51. 

Thomas  Poole  and  His  Friends,  by  Mrs.  Henry  Sandford  (1888),  I,  272. 
Letters  of  Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge,  I,  115,  313,  425,  164,  155,  314. 
Clayden's  Rogers  and  His  Contemporaries,  I,  193. 
The  Works  of  Charles  and  Mary  Lamb,  ed.  by  E.  V.  Lucas  (1905),  VI, 

13,  128,  129,  134,  56,  60,  89,  15;  V,  27,  28. 
Southey 's  Annual  Anthology,  II. 
Coleridge's  Poem,  To  the  Author  of  Poems  Published  Anonymously  at 

Bristol. 
The  Critical  Review,  Oct.  1798. 

Thomas  Hutchinson's  reprint  of  the  L5nical  Ballads  (1898),  pp.  8,  9. 
Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge  and  the  English  Romantic  School,  by  Alois 

Brandl  (Lady  Eastlake's  translation  1887),  p.  155. 
Beers's  History  of  English  Romanticism,  i8th  Cent.,  pp.  397,  398. 
Clayden's  Early  Life  of  Rogers,  pp.  147,  243. 
Seccombe's  Age  of  Johnson,  p.  42. 
Crabb  Robinson's  Diary,  I,  154. 
Joseph  Cottle's  Malvern  Hills  (4th  ed.,  1829),  p.  vii. 
Harper's  William  Wordsworth,  II,  429,  311;  I,  347. 
Preface  to  1838  ed.  of  Southey 's  poems. 
Southey's  poem,  Jaspar. 

Literary  Rambles  in  the  West  of  England,  by  A.  L.  Salmon  (1906),  p.  261. 
Coleridge's  poem,  Recollections  of  Love. 

[  321  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

CHAPTER  III 

Much  of  the  material  here  given  is  from  Lockhart's  Life  of  Scott,  editions 

of  which  are  thoroughly  indexed.  Other  sources  are  as  follows: 
The  Poetical  Remains  of  the  Late  Dr.  John  Leyden  (1819),  pp.  361,  49, 

XXV,  346,  xxxiii,  317,  365,  352. 
The  Mountain  Bard,  by  James  Hogg  (1807),  PP-  xxviii,  7,  134. 
Memorials  of  James  Hogg,  the  Ettrick  Shepherd,  by  Mrs.  Garden  (2d  ed. 

1887),  p.  vi. 
The  Minstrelsy  of  the  Scottish  Border  (5th  ed.  1812),  I,  15;   II,  32; 

II,   239;   II,  309;    I,  cxxi;    I,   cxxxii;    II,  33;    II,    188;    II,   361; 

I,  cxxvii;  I,  cxviii;  I,  cxxvi;  I,  cxxvii;  I,  124;  I,  96. 
Popular  Ballads  and  Songs,  etc.,  by  Robert  Jamieson  (1806),  p.  vii. 
Specimens  of  early  English  Metrical  Romances,  by  George  Ellis  (ed.  of 

1848),  Preface. 
Article  on  Karajich  in  Encyclopedia  Britannica. 
Scott^s  Introduction  to  Canto  III  of  Marmion. 
Ballad  Criticism  in  Scandinavia  and  Great  Britain,  by  S.  B.  Hustvedt, 

p.  269. 
L'Estrange's  Life  of  Mary  Mitford,  I,  217. 
The  History  and  Poetry  of  the  Scottish  Border,  by  John  Veitch  (1878), 

pp.  246,  258,  37,  3. 
Knight's  Letters  of  the  Wordsworth  Family,  II,  210. 
Jane  Porter's  Retrospective  Introduction  (1831)  to  Scottish  Chiefs. 
William  Blackwood  and  His  Sons,  by  Mrs.  Oliphant  (1897),  I,  452. 
Life  and  Correspondence  of  Robert  Southey,  III,  157. 
The  Life  and  Letters  of  Washington  Irving,  by  P.  M.  Irving  (1862),  I,  378. 
Burns's  poem,  To  the  Guidwife  of  Wauchope  House. 

CHAPTER  IV 

I 
Life  and  Correspondence  of  Robert  Southey,  II,  227;  II,  352;  IV,  91;    j 

II,  136;  III,  153;  II,  25;  II,  242;  III,  no;  IV,  in;  II,  109;  III,  | 
285;  II,  255;  IV,  16;  II,  360;  VI,  18;  II,  271;  II,  199;  I,  278;  I 
II,  2;  I,  197;  IV,  100;  IV,  227;  II,  198;  IV,  105. 

Chronicle  of  the  Cid,  by  Robert  Southey  (Am.  ed.  1846),  p.  330. 

Beattie's  Life  of  Campbell,  I,  495. 

Crabb  Robinson's  Diary,  I,  55. 

Knight's  Letters  of  the  Wordsworth  Family,  II,  29;  I,  457;  I,  496;  I,  174; 

[  322  ] 


SOURCES  AND  AUTHORITIES 

II,  51;  I,  48s;  I,  486;  II,  437;  II,  2;  II,  36;  II,  124;  II,  125; 
II,  162;  II,  128;  I,  204;  I,  138. 

Reminiscences  of  the  English  Lake  Poets,  by  Thomas  De  Quincey,  Every- 
man Library  ed.,  pp.  24,  54,  104. 

Coleridge's  poem,  A  Stranger  Minstrel. 

Wordsworth's  poems:  Poems  on  the  Naming  of  Places,  III;  "When  to  the 
attractions  of  the  busy  world";  and  "Composed  by  the  side  of 
Grasmere  Lake." 

Letters  of  Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge,  I,  388. 

Lucas's  Charles  Lamb  and  the  Lloyds,  pp.  239,  249,  241. 

Desultory  Thoughts  in  London,  by  Charles  Lloyd  (1821),  pp.  i,  89,  129, 
138,  141. 

Poems,  by  John  Wilson  (ed.  of  1825),  I,  183. 

Bryan  Waller  Procter,  etc.,  by  C.  P.,  p.  142. 

Harper's  William  Wordsworth,  II,  165,  230,  197,  206,  375. 

Wordsworth's  Excursion,  Book  II. 

Cambridge  ed.  of  Wordsworth's  poems,  pp.  434,  361,  346. 

The  Autobiography  of  Leigh  Hunt  (ed.  of  1870),  p.  228. 

Lucas's  Works  of  Charles  and  Mary  Lamb,  I,  162. 

CHAPTER  V  --" 

Sources  other  than  Lockhart's  Life  of  Scott  are  as  follows: 

The  Spirit  of  Discovery,  by  William  Bowles  (1804),  P-  xi. 

Clayden's  Rogers  and  His  Contemporaries,  I,  126. 

Life  and  Correspondence  of  Robert  Southey,  III,  173,  126. 

Knight's  Letters  of  the  Wordsworth  Family,  I,  355;  II,  20;  I,  365. 

Scott's  Introduction  to  Canto  VI  of  Marmion. 

Heine's  Romantische  Schule,  section  on  Uhland. 

Main  currents  in  Nineteenth  Century  Literature,  by  Georg  Brandes, 

II,  xvi. 
L'Estrange's  Life  of  Mary  Mitford,  I,  106,  231,  91,  132,  107. 
Wordsworth  and  His  Circle,  by  D.  W.  Rannie  (1907),  p.  318. 
The  Works  of  Lord  Byron,  ed.  R.  E.  Prothero  (1898  ff.).  Letters  and 

Journals,  I,  343;  III,  239;  IV,  228. 
Harper's  William  Wordsworth,  II,  205. 
Beattie's  Life  and  Letters  of  Thomas  Campbell,  I,  523. 
Poets  and  Poetry  of  Scotland,  ed.  by  J.  G.  Wilson  (1876),  I,  404. 
Cambridge  ed.  of  Scott's  poems,  pp.  230,  229. 

[  323  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

Constance  de  Castile,  by  William  Sotheby  (i8i2),p.  126. 
Poems,  by  Miss  Holford  (181 1),  p.  43. 
Memorials  of  James  Hogg,  by  Mrs.  Garden,  p.  x. 

The  Works  of  the  Ettrick  Shepherd,  ed.  by  T.  Thomson  (1873),  II,  43, 
55,  15,  56,  34. 

CHAPTER  VI 

Memoirs,  etc.,  of  Thomas  Moore,  Lord  John  Russell,  II,  660;  I,  276; 

II,  552;  I,  96;  I,  98;  II,  611;  I,  136;  I,  114;  I,  23;  I,  344;  I,  423; 

I,  420. 
Byron's  Works,  Letters  and  Journals,  V,  42;  II,  128;  III,  227;  III,  119; 

V,  363;  V,  235;  VI,  333;  I,  249;  II,  255. 
Holland  House,  by  Marie  Liechtenstein  (1874),  I,  138,  24,  122. 
Clayden's  Rogers  and  His  Contemporaries,  I,  22,  35,  298,  305. 
John  Hookham  Frere  and  His  Friends,  by  Gabrielle  Festing   (1899), 

p.  186. 
Life  and  Correspondence  of  Robert  Southey,  IV,  44. 
Rogers's  Poetical  Works,  Aldine  ed..  Memoir  by  E.  Bell. 
Bryan  Waller  Procter,  etc.,  p.  148. 
Poems,  by  W.  R.  Spencer  (1835),  pp.  53,  51,  131. 
Beattie's  Life  of  Campbell,  I,  546,  26,  32,  46,  121,  70,  123,  38,  93,  165, 

188,  128,  191,  220,  326,  367. 
Birrell's  William  Hazlitt,  p.  138. 
Knight's  Letters  of  the  Wordsworth  Family,  I,  303. 
L'Estrange's  Life  of  Mary  Mitford,  I,  283. 
The  Autobiography  of  Leigh  Hunt,  p.  163. 
Foliage,  by  Leigh  Hunt  (1818),  p.  14. 
Advice  to  Julia,  by  Henry  Luttrell  (1820),  pp.  39-41. 
Henry  Hart  Milman,  by  A.  Milman  (1900),  p.  127. 
Byron's  Corsair  II,  xv ;  Lara  II,  x. 

Campbell's  Lines  Written  at  the  Request  of  the  Highland  Society. 
O.  Elton's  Survey,  II,  145. 
Richter's  Quintus  Fixlein,  Letter-box  I. 

Brandes's  Main  Currents  in  Nineteenth  Century  Literature,  V,  xxviii. 
Byron's  Don  Juan,  X,  xvii-xix. 

Thomas  Moore,  by  Stephen  Gwynn  (1905),  pp.  74,  77,  95. 
P.  Irving's  Life  of  Washington  Irving,  II,  37,  209. 

[  324  ] 


SOURCES  AND  AUTHORITIES 
CHAPTER  VII 

Sources  other  than  Lockhart's  Life  of  Scott  are  as  follows: 

O.  Elton's  Survey,  I,  363,  367,  408. 

Guy  Mannermg,  Chap.  I. 

Heart  of  Midlothian,  Chap.  XXX. 

Bride  of  Lammermoor,  Chap.  XXX. 

William  Blackwood  and  His  Sons,  Mrs.  Oliphant,  I,  4;  I,  241 ;  I,  26;  I,  33; 

I,  274;  I,  279;  I,  397;  I,  285;  I,  159;  I,  150;  I,  331;  I,  216;  I,  114; 

I,  363;  I,  423;  I,  271;  II,  25;  II,  26;  I,  43;  I,  42;  11,  18. 
Tales  from  Blackwood,  The  Fatal  Repast. 
R.  L.  Stevenson's  Talk  and  Talkers. 

The  Development  of  the  English  Novel,  by  W.  L.  Cross  (1899),  p.  170. 
De  Quincey's  Works  (author's  ed.  of  1863),  XIII,  42. 

CHAPTER  VIII  — 

Byron's  Works,  Letters  and  Journals,  V,  337. 

C.  Kent's  Leigh  Himt,  p.  xii. 

Life  of  Leigh  Hunt,  by  Cosmo  Monkhouse  (1893),  pp.  124,  85,  116,  196. 

Recollections  of  Writers,  by  Charles  and  Mary  Cowden  Clarke,  New  York, 

Scribner's  ed.,  pp.  18,  16,  155,  26,  48,  49,  19,  135,  134,  28,  126, 

124,  152. 
Life  of  Benjamin  Robert  Haydon,  ed.,  etc.,  by  Tom  Taylor,  2d  ed.  (1853), 

I,  122,  170,  192,  219,  362,  93,  95,  99,  335,  296,  200. 
Leigh  Hunt's  Autobiography,  pp.  192,  220,  161,  243,  275,  219,  230. 
The  Life  and  Letters  of  Joseph  Severn,  by  William  Sharp  (1892),  pp. 

17,  28,  116,  23,  32,  126,  59,  29,  166,  211,  103. 
Bryan  Waller  Procter,  etc.,  pp.  195,  136,  201,  200,  195. 
A.  Birrell's  William  Hazlitt,  pp.  188,  in. 
Leigh  Hunt's  Foliage,  pp.  cxv,  18,  20. 
The  Correspondence  of  Leigh  Hunt,  ed.  by  His  Eldest  Son  (1862),  I,  134, 

136,2,78,127,158,80. 
O.  Elton's  Survey,  II,  293,  242,  243. 
Life,  Letters,  and  Literary  Remains  of  John  Keats,  ed.  by  R.  M.  Milnes 

(one  vol.  ed.  1848),  p.  94. 
Keats's  Endymion,  I,  134;  Sleep  and  Poetry. 

Marcian  Colonna  and  Other  Poems,  by  Barry  Cornwall  (1820),  p.  169. 
Works  of  William  Hazlitt,  Waller  and  Glover,  VI,  16;  I,  4;  I,  79. 
Joseph  and  His  Brethren,  by  Charles  Wells  (1876),  p.  ix. 

[  325  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

Lamb^s  essay,  Witches  and  Other  Night  Fears. 

The  Life  of  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley,  by  Edward  Dowden  (1886),  I,  221. 

Life  and  Correspondence  of  Robert  Southey,  III,  325. 

Forman's  Shelley's  Prose  Works,  IV,  79,  144. 

Knight's  Letters  of  the  Wordsworth  Family,  II,  63. 

Poetry  and  Prose  by  John  Keats,  ed.  by  H.  B.  Forman   (1890),  pp. 

106,  109. 
Leigh  Hunt's  Relations  With  Byron,  Shelley,  and  Keats,  by  Bamette 

Miller  (i9io),pp.  128-130. 
Keats,  by  Sidney  Colvin  (1887),  p.  113. 

CHAPTER  IX 

Lucas's  Lamb's  Works,  VI,  33;  VI,  229;  VI,  382;  VI,  404;  VII,  797; 

VII,  782;  VII,  613;  VII,  618;  VII,  669;  VII,  684;  VII,  690. 
Life  and  Correspondence  of  Robert  Southey,  II,  287. 
Lamb's  essay.  Old  China. 
Beattie's  Life  of  Campbell,  I,  380. 
Bryan  Waller  Procter,  etc.,  pp.  125,  172,  45,  56. 

Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge,  by  James  Dykes  Campbell  (1894),  pp.  184,  185. 
The  Literary  Gazette,  May  22d  1819. 
The  Examiner,  May  23d  18 19. 
Blackwood's  Magazine,  June  1819. 
Procter's  poem.  To  John  Forster. 
Clarke's  Recollections  of  Writers,  pp.  146,  14-15. 
Wells's  Joseph  and  His  Brethren  (ed.  of  1876),  p.  190. 
Poems  of  Thomas  Lovell  Beddoes,  Muses'  Library  ed.,  p.  x. 
Diet,  of  Nat.  Biog.,  George  Darley. 
Works  of  Hazlitt,  I,  24;  VI,  192;  IX,  152. 
Byron's  Don  Juan,  IX,  xiv. 
Rannie's  Wordsworth  and  His  Circle,  p.  221. 
C.  Monkhouse's  Life  of  Leigh  Hunt,  p.  59. 
Sharp's  Life  of  Severn,  p.  74. 

Final  Memorials  of  Charles  Lamb,  by  T.  N.  Talfourd  (1848),  II,  2-3,  7. 
Memoir  of  Henry  Francis  Cary,  by  H.  Cary  (1847),  H?  94-95- 
Thomas  Hood,  by  Walter  Jerrold  (1909),  pp.  102,  95,  93-94,  278,  257. 
Poems  by  Hartley  Coleridge  (ed.  of  1853),  p.  xcii. 
De  Quincey  and  His  Friends,  by  James  Hogg  (1895),  p.  53. 
The  Life  of  John  Clare,  by  F.  Martin  (1865),  pp.  81,  86. 

[  326  ] 


SOURCES  AND  AUTHORITIES 

The  London  Magazine,  II,  194;  VI,  7;  VII,  180;  VII,  96. 

Blackwood's  Magazine,  XIII,  86. 

Lamb's  essays:  The  Old  Benchers  of  the  Inner  Temple;  Oxford  in  the 

Vacation. 
Lockhart's  Life  of  Scott,  Chap.  L. 
Life  and  Correspondence  of  Robert  Southey,  IV,  350. 
Knight's  Letters  of  the  Wordsworth  Family,  III,  28. 
The  Romantic  Movement  in  English  Poetry,  by  Arthur  Symons  (1909), 

p.  289. 

CHAPTER  X 

G.  Festing's  John  Hookham  Frere,  pp.  188,  18,  186. 

The  Works  of  John  Hookham  Frere,  ed.  by  W.  E.  Frere,  2d  ed.  (1874), 

II,  222;  I,  164;  II,  229;  II,  242. 
Life  and  Correspondence  of  Robert  Southey,  V,  21. 
Desultory  Thoughts  in  London,  by  Charles  Lloyd. 
Lloyd's  preface  to  Beritola. 

Marcian  Colonna,  by  Barry  Cornwall  (1820),  p.  3. 
Hunt's  Foliage,  Ixxiii-lxxiv. 
Works  of  Hazlitt,  IX,  234,  90,  229. 
Diet,  of  Nat.  Biog.,  Turner. 
Paris  in  1 81 5,  by  George  Croly. 
O.  Elton's  Survey,  II,  258. 
Letters  of  S.  T.  Coleridge,  II,  458. 
Southey 's  Life  and  Correspondence,  III,  268. 
A  History  of  English  Romanticism  in  the  Nineteenth  Century,  by  H.  A. 

Beers  (1901),  pp.  98,  102,  109. 
Knight's  Letters  of  the  Wordsworth  Family,  II,  216. 
Byron's  Works,  Letters  and  Journals,  V,  193;  V,  194;  IV,  315;  V,  217; 

V,  243. 
Lord  Byron,  by  Karl  Elze  (1872  translation),  p.  249. 
The  Modem  Language  Review,  IX,  440  ff. 
Dowden's  Life  of  Shelley,  II,  193,  381,  245,  264. 
Byron^s  Childe  Harold,  IV,  xxxv,  xlii. 
Byron's  Island,  II,  vi-vii. 
Forman's  Prose  Works  of  Shelley,  IV,  239. 
Shelley's  Advertisement  to  his  Rosalind  and  Helen. 
Correspondence  of  Leigh  Hunt,  I,  243. 
Autobiography  of  Leigh  Hunt,  p.  324. 

[  327  ] 


ENGLISH  ROMANTIC  GENERATION 

Baraette  Miller's  Leigh  Hunt,  pp.  112,  115. 

Lord  Byron  and  Some  of  His  Contemporaries,  by  Leigh  Hunt,  p.  52. 

Preface  to  1844  ed.  of  Hunt's  poems. 

Walter  Savage  Landor,  by  John  Forster  (1869),  p^.  260,  329,  280,  356, 

261,  273,  322,  394. 
Landor,  by  Sidney  Colvin  (1881),  pp.  134,  83,  no,  135,  128. 
Ausbreitung  und  Verfall  der  Romantik,  by  Ricarda  Huch  (1902),  pp. 

33-36. 

CHAPTER  XI 

Bryan  Waller  Procter,  etc.,  p.  135. 

Blackwood's  Magazine,  Apr.  1822,  456;  Aug.  1817,  516;  Dec.  1822,  769; 
Mar.  1823,  347;  July  1822,  61,  71. 

The  London  Magazine,  July  1820,  45. 

Life  and  Correspondence  of  Robert  Southey,  IV,  305;  VI,  21;  VI,  161; 
VI,  39;  V,  339. 

Knight's  Letters  of  the  Wordsworth  Family,  II,  145;  III,  122;  II,  359. 

Lockhart's  Life  of  Scott,  Chaps.  LXIV,  LXV,  LIV,  LIX. 

Correspondence  of  Leigh  Hunt,  I,  240. 

Lucas's  Lamb's  Works,  VI,  365;  VII,  645;  VII,  814;  VII,  617;  VII,  748. 

William  Blackwood  and  His  Sons,  I,  324. 

Henry  Hart  Milman,  by  A.  Milman,  pp.  57,  123. 

Symons's  Romantic  Movement,  p.  266. 

L'Estrange's  Life  of  Mary  Mitford,  II,  147,  28,  84,  141,  259,  244. 

P.  Irving's  Life  of  Washington  Irving,  I,  362;  II,  166. 

Sharp's  Life  of  Severn,  p.  137. 

Milman's  Introductory  Observations  to  his  Belshazzar  (1839  ^^O* 

De  Quincey's  Letters  to  a  Young  Man,  III. 

Byron's  Don  Juan,  XI,  liv;  V,  Hi. 

Mrs.  Hemans's  poems:  The  Coronation  of  Inez  de  Castro,  The  Abencer- 
rage.  The  Last  Constantine,  The  Indian  City,  Ancient  Greek  Song 
of  Exile,  Edith,  The  Restoration  of  the  Works  of  Art  to  Italy,  A 
Tale  of  the  Secret  Tribunal,  The  Wild  Huntsman,  The  Forest 
Sanctuary,  A  Tale  of  the  Fourteenth  Century. 

Diet,  of  Nat.  Biog.,  Letitia  Landon,  Mary  R.  Mitford. 

Letitia  Landon's  Troubadour,  II,  IV. 

Mrs.  Browning's  poem,  L.  E.  L.'s  Last  Question. 

C.  Kent's  Leigh  Hunt,  p.  126. 

Beddoes's  Poetical  Works  (ed.  of  1890),  p.  xvii. 

[  32S  ] 


SOURCES  AND  AUTHORITIES 

Beers's  History  of  English  Romanticism,  19th  Cent.,  p.  73. 

Clayden's  Rogers  and  His  Contemporaries,  II,  80,  36,  4. 

Martin's  Life  of  John  Clare,  pp.  86,  204,  192,  202,  252. 

Hunt's  Autobiography,  pp.  155,  230. 

Hunt's  Foliage  (1818),  pp.  11,  12,  9. 

Houghton's  Life,  etc.,  of  Keats,  pp.  139-140. 

Byron's  Works,  Letters  and  Journals,  IV,  303;  V,  281;  IV,  169;  IV,  225; 

V,  104;  VI,  4;  V,  132. 
Works  of  Hazlitt,  VI,  336. 

Russell's  Memoirs,  etc.,  of  Thomas  Moore,  I,  202;  I,  248;  I,  251. 
Life  of  Haydon,  II,  119. 
O.  Elton's  Survey,  I,  390. 
Carlyle's  Signs  of  the  Times  (II,  337  of  Carlyle's  Works,  1869  ed.). 

CHAPTERS  XIII  AND  XIV  _ 

Thomas  Warton's  Ode  on  the  Approach  of  Summer. 

Essays  in  a  Series  of  Letters,  by  John  Foster  (1833  ed.),  pp.  131,  132. 
(First  called  to  my  attention  by  Dr.  Paul  Kaufman.) 

Hazlitt's  Works,  X,  81;  VI,  43;  IV,  200. 

Byron's  Works,  Letters  and  Journals,  II,  314. 

Lucas's  Lamb's  Works,  VII,  831. 

Carlyle's  Essay  on  Bums. 

O.  Elton's  Survey,  II,  234. 

Symons's  Romantic  Movement,  pp.  9,  10. 

Lockhart's  Life  of  Scott,  Chap.  LXXII. 

William  Blake,  Poet  and  Mystic,  by  P.  Berger  (D.  H.  Conner's  trans- 
lation), pp.  lO-II. 

Die  Bliitezeit  der  Romantik,  by  Ricarda  Huch,  p.  341. 

Jane  Austen  and  Her  Times,  by  G.  E.  Mitton,  2d  ed.  (1906),  p.  163. 

Jane  Austen  and  Her  Country-House  Comedy,  by  W.  H.  Helm  (1909), 
pp.  86,  65. 


> 


[  329  ] 


INDEX 


"Abbot,"  Scott's,  154. 

"Abou  Ben  Adhem,"  Hunt's,  174. 

Addison,  Joseph,  96,  12&,  129,  132, 
148,  172,  256,  276. 

Aeschylus,  181,  246,  304. 

"Affliction  of  Margaret,"  Words- 
worth's, 108-109. 

"Alastor,"  Shelley's,  180,  183. 

Albums,  262. 

"Album  Verses,"  Lamb's,  262. 

Alcman,  179. 

Alfieri,  v.,  98,  227,  234. 

Allston,  Washington,  244. 

"Amadis  of  Gaul,"  Southey's,  93, 
112. 

"Ancient  Mariner,"  Coleridge's,  51, 
54-55,  60,  64,  66. 

"Ancient  Spanish  Ballads,"  Lock- 
hart's,  93,  161. 

"Anne  of  Geierstein,"  Scott's,  154, 

155. 
Anti- Jacobin,  267. 
"Antiquary,"  Scott's,  153,  154. 
Ariosto,  LV114,  215,  218,  233,  234. 
Amim,  L.  A.,  von,  76. 
Austen,  Jane,  114,  117,  161,  268, 

272,  274,  309-310,  311- 
Aytoun,  W.  E.;  162. 

Baillie,  Joanna,  62,  83,  86-87,  122, 

127,  134,  143- 
"Ballads     and     Metrical     Tales," 

Southey's,  $6. 

[  33 


Ballantyne,  James,  71,  151,  152. 
Balzac,  H.  de,  157. 
"Barry  Cornwall."    See  Procter. 
Barton,    Bernard,    201,    203,    208, 

209,  253,  291. 
Beattie,  James,  14,  15,  29,  32,  115. 
Beau  Brummel,  130. 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  186,  187, 

191,  192,  196,  197. 
Beddoes,  Thomas  L.,  192,  193-195, 

197,  254. 

Beers,  H.  A.,  55,  255,  287,  297. 

Behn,  Aphra,  242. 

"Beppo,"  Byron's,  214,  215,  216. 

Berni,  F.,  214,  215,  233. 

"Betrothed,"  Scott's,  154,  iS5- 

"Biographia  Literaria,"  Coleridge's, 
156,  288. 

"Black  Dwarf,"  Scott's,  153. 

Blackwood's  Magazine,  12,  102, 
152, 155-159,  160, 161, 163, 172, 
184,  191,  199,  206,  239,  240,  243, 
244,  254,  25s,  281. 

Blackwood,  William,  158,  161,  162. 

Blair,  Robert,  14. 

Blake,  William,  14,  21,  22,  55,  66, 
68,  83,  104,  116,  117,  120,  138, 
148,  206,  207,  288,  290,  293,  302, 
303,  306-309,  310,  312. 

Blanchard,  Laman,  252. 

Bloomfield,  Robert,  26-27,  29,  112, 
203,  307. 

Boaden,  James,  38. 

I  ] 


INDEX 


Boccaccio,  G.,  216,  217,  221,  234. 

Boehme,  Jacob,  55,  118,  307. 

Boileau,  N.,  129,  135,  140,  257. 

Booth,  J.  B.,  198. 

"Borderers,"  Wordsworth's,  54,  60. 

Borrow,  George,  246. 

Bowles,' William  Lisle,  20,  21,  48, 

49,  63,  102,  112,  130,  134,  254, 

255,  256,  258,  260,  269. 
Bowring,  Sir  John,  161. 
Brandes,  Georg,  115. 
Brentano,  C,  157,  307. 
"Bridal  of  Triermain,"  Scott's,  122, 

283,  289. 
"Bride  of  Abydos,"  Byron's,  145, 

177. 
"Bride   of   Lammermoor,"   Scott's, 

153- 

"Brothers,"  Wordsworth's,  65,  107. 

Brown,  C.  A.,  165,  167,  192. 

Browne,  Sir  Thomas,  189. 

Browne,  William,  189,  192. 

Browning,  Mrs.  E.  B.,  252. 

Browning,  Robert,  225. 

Brunetiere,  F.,  298. 

Brydges,  Sir  Egerton,  189. 

Bulwer-Lytton,  E.  R.,  221,  263. 

Burger,  G.  A.,  37,  55,  64,  69,  139. 

Burns,  Robert,  14,  21,  49,  51,  56, 
66,  68,  72,  88,  89,  108,  122,  141, 
14s,  154,  197,  200,  203,  210,  265, 
266,  309,  312-313. 

Burton,  R.,  189. 

Byron,  George  Gordon,  11,  13,  34, 
68,  92,  93,  102,  113,  116,  117, 
118,  120,  122,  123,  124,  130,  131, 
132,  133,  134,  137,  138,  139,  140, 
143-147,  iss,  157,  163, 165,  172, 
173,  17s,  176,  177, 182, 184,  188, 

[  33 


191,197,198,207,213,214,215, 

216,  217,  218,  219,  223,  224, 225- 
228,  232,  233,  234,  235,  239,  240, 
242,  243,  245,  246,  248,  251,  254, 
25s,  256,  257,  258,  259,  260,  261, 
262,  269,  270,  275,  276-280, 
281,  291,  292,  293,  301,  303,  313, 
315,  316. 

"Cadyow  Castle,"  Scott's,  79,  290. 
"Cain,"  Byron's,  223,  241,  243. 
Callanan,  J.  J.,  306. 
Calvert,  Raisley,  66. 
Campbell,  J.  Dykes,  188. 
Campbell,  Thomas,  24,  27,  28,  30- 

32,  48,  68,  80,  87,  93,  112,  114, 

127, 130,  131,  133,  134,  135,  138, 

140, 141-143, 147, 168, 173, 184, 

187,  239,  246,  254,  255,  256,  258, 

259,  261,  282,  311. 
Carlyle,  Thomas,  74,  83,  100,  144, 

164,  200,  223,  247,  261,  263,  293. 
Cary,  H.  F.,  199,  200,  205,  222, 

223,  307. 
"Castle  Dangerous,"  Scott's,  155. 
"Cenci,"  Shelley's,  192,  221,  228- 

229. 
Chateaubriand,    Vicomte    de,    33, 

157,  207,  244,  249,  251. 
Chatterton,  Thomas,  14,  15,  21,  33, 

43,  45,  62,  66,  115,  267,  307. 
Chaucer,  Geoffrey,   172,  173,  212, 

217,  221. 
Chesterfield,  Lord,  57. 

"Childe  Harold,"  Byron's,  93,  121, 
122,  130,  145,  146,  173,  176,  219, 
223,  225,  226,  227,  232,  249,  271. 

"Christabel,"    Coleridge's,    11,    51, 

2  ] 


INDEX 


62,  64,  6s,  66,  74,  82,  84,  91,  97, 

134,  271,  292,  296. 
"Christopher  North."    See  Wilson, 

John. 
"Chronicle  of  the  Cid,"  Southey's, 

93- 
Churchill,  Charles,  14. 
"City  of  the  Plague,"  John  Wilson's, 

lOO-IOI. 

Clare,  John,  200,  201,  202,  203, 
204,  209,  261,  262,  305. 

Clarke,  Chas.  Cowden,  164,  165, 
166,  167,  168,  169,  171,  182,  196, 
197,  198. 

"Cloud,"  Shelley's,  230. 

Coleridge,  Hartley,  98,  201,  203, 
204,  209,  210. 

Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor,  11,  15, 
20,  22,  34,  38,  42,  43,  44,  45,  46, 
47,  48,  49,  50,  51,  54,  55,  56, 
57,  58,  59,  62,  63-66,  68,  70,  78, 
90,  91,  95-98,  loi,  116, 117, 120, 
131, 134, 143, 146,  151, 152,  163, 
167, 169, 186,  188,  189, 191,  198, 
208,  212,  213,  222,  223,  240,  25s, 
268,  269,  270,  272,  275,  288,  291, 
292,  293,  300,  302,  307. 

Collins,  William,  14,  267. 

Colman,  George,  269. 

Colvin,  Sidney,  237. 

Combe,  William,  269. 

"Confessions  of  an  English  Opium- 
Eater,"  De  Quincey's,  200,  202, 
205-206,  253. 

Constable,  A.,  113,  151,  155. 

"Corsair,"  Byron's,  138,  143,  146, 
173,  182,  239. 

Cottle,  Amos,  45,  48. 

Cottle,  Joseph,  44,  45,  46,  47,  5o, 


52,  58-59,  62,  66,  165,  17s,  243, 

269. 
"Count  Julian,"  Landor's,  93. 
"Count  Robert  of  Paris,"  Scott's, 

154,  155. 
Courthope,  W.  J.,  25,  298. 
Cowper,  William,  14,  20,  21,  22,  48, 

49,  51,  53,  66,  68,  89,  98,  108, 

210,  266. 
Crabbe,  George,  27,  32,  43,  48,  68, 

114,  121,  122,  138,  148,  156,  172, 

210,  231,  258,  260,  270,  287,  303, 

310-312,  311,  312. 
Croker,  Thomas  Crofton,  241,  306. 
Croly,  George,  221,  243,  246,  261, 

281. 
Cross,  W.  L.,  160. 
Cunningham,   Allan,   83,   85,   200, 

201,  203,  204,  209,  210,  261. 
"Curse  of  Kehama,"  Southey's,  91, 

109,  117,  222. 

Dale,  Thomas,  243. 

Daniel,  S.,  189. 

Dante    Alighieri,    iii,    199,    221- 

225,  233,  234,  296,  298,  304. 
D'Arblay,  Madame,  29. 
Darley,  George,  193,  195,  196,  197, 

200,  203,  205,  254. 
Darwin,  Erasmus,  23-24,   57,   63, 

267. 
Davy,  Sir  Humphry,  62. 
Day,  Thomas,  23. 
De  Musset,  A.,  224. 
De  Quincey,  Thomas,  25,  90,  96, 

99-100,  loi,  102,  109,  159,  161, 

200,    201,    202,   205-206,    211, 

246,  247. 
Dekker,  Thomas,  196,  197. 


[  333  ] 


INDEX 


Delia  Cruscans,  26. 

Denham,  J.,  132. 

Dermody,  Thomas,  306. 

De  Stael,  Madame,  133,  144,  289, 

291,  293. 
"Desultory  Thoughts  in  London," 

Lloyd's,  99,  216. 
Disraeli,  Isaac,  255. 
"Divine  Comedy."    See  Dante. 
Dobson,  Austin,  296. 
"Don  Juan,"  Byron's,  146, 156,  214, 

215,  216,  233,  24s,  247,  276- 

280. 
"Dramatic  Scenes,"  Procter's,  190- 

192,  217. 
Drayton,  M.,  192. 
Dryden,  John,  116,  128,  135,  172, 

174,  256,  259. 
Dyce,  Alexander,  196,  197,  242. 
Dyer,  George,  62,  305. 
Dyer,  John,  13,  15,  198. 

"Earthly  Paradise,"  Wm.  Morris's, 

182. 
Edgeworth,  Maria,  193,  311. 
Edinburgh  Review,   29,    102,    155, 

177,  189,  222,  261,  290. 
Eichendorff,  Joseph  von,  237,  238. 
Elgin  Marbles,  169,  175,  176,  177, 

178,  182. 

Elliott,  Ebenezer,  113,  122. 
Ellis,  George,  74,  75. 
Elton,  O.,  158,  182,  294. 
"Endymion,"    Keats 's,    171,    173, 

174,  179,  192,  313- 

"English  Bards  and  Scotch  Review- 
ers," Byron's,  117,  137,  173,  268. 

"English  Eclogues,"  Southey's,  51, 
55. 


"Epipsychidion,"  Shelley's,  231. 
"Epistle  to  a  Friend,"  Rogers's,  135. 
"Essays    of    Elia,"    Lamb's,    205, 

207-208. 
"Ettrick    Shepherd."      See    Hogg, 

James. 
"Eve  of  St.  Agnes,"  Keats's,   74, 

292,  294. 
"Eve  of  St.  John,"  Scott's,  79. 
Examiner,  Hunt's,   165,   166,   170, 

176,  191,  199,  256,  307. 
"Excursion,"  Wordsworth's,  52,  65, 

98,  102,  106,  109,  110,  118,  143, 

277,  296,  297. 

Falconer,  William,  13. 

"Family  Legend,"  Baillie's,  122. 

"Fall  of  Robespierre,"  Coleridge's, 

etc.,  44. 
Fawcett,  40. 

Ferrier,  Susan  E.,  151,  153,  161. 
Filicaja,  V.  da,  226,  251. 
Ford,  John,  187,  190,  192. 
Forman,  H.  B.,  196. 
Foscolo,  Ugo,  222. 
Foster,  John,  288. 
Fouque,  F.  H.  K.,  115,  147. 
Fox,  Charles  James,  129,  132. 
Frere,  John  Hookham,   161,  213- 

215,  216,  217,  272,  283. 
Friend,  Coleridge's,  96. 
"Frost  at  Midnight,"   Coleridge's, 

51. 
Fuseli,  J.  H.,  175. 

Gait,  John,  86,  151,  160. 
Gautier,  T.,  146,  157,  193. 
"Gertrude    of    Wyoming,"    Camp- 
bell's, 121. 


334  ] 


INDEX 


"Giaour,"  Byron's,  ii,  145,  177. 
Gifford,  William,  26,  138,  187,  255, 

266,  281. 
Gilchrist,  Octavius,  255. 
Gillies,  R.  P.,  102,  158. 
Gilpin,  William,  21,  89,  269. 
Gleig,  George,  160. 
Godwin,  William,  180,  187,  268. 
Goethe,  J.  W.  von,  37,  38,  no,  177, 

237,  238,  279. 
"Goetz  von  Berlichingen,"  Goethe's, 

38,  39,  41,  69,  71,  92. 
Goldoni,  Carlo,  221. 
Goldsmith,  Oliver,  14,  31,  79,  129, 

142,  256. 
Grahame,  James,  122,  127,  269. 
Gray,  Thomas,  14,  31,  33,  48,  49, 

89,  92,  142,  212,  250,  266,  267, 

295,  307. 
"Grave  of  King  Arthur,"  Warton's, 

82. 
Greene,  Robert,  189,  196. 
Greville,  F.,  189. 
Grimm  Brothers,  306. 
Guiccioli,  Countess  T.,  223. 
"Guy  Mannering,"  Scott's,  152. 

Halliwell,  J.  O.,  75. 

Hamilton,  Thomas,  161. 

"Harold    the    Dauntless,"    Scott's, 

122,  151. 
"Hart-Leap  Well,"  Wordsworth's, 

108. 
Harper,  G.  M.,  62,  65,  no,  in. 
Haydon,    Benjamin    Robert,    165, 

167,  169,  171,  175,  176,  178,  182, 

183,  184,  198,  245. 
Hayley,  William,   21,   22,   24,   26, 

116,  222,  269,  307. 


Hazlitt,  William,  38,  46,  65,  loi, 
133,  156,  165,  166,  167,  168,  170, 
171,  176,  177,  182,  184,  186,  188, 
189,  192,  196,  197,  200,  202,  208, 
211,  219,  234,  290,  291,  292,  293. 

"Heart  of  Midlothian,"  Scott's,  153, 

154. 
Heber,  Richard,  71,  80. 
Heber,  Reginald,  243,  244,  253. 
"Hebrew  Melodies,"  Byron's,  242. 
Heine,  Heinrich,  115,  290,  293. 
"Hellas,"  Shelley's,  181. 
Hemans,  Felicia,  62,  93,  162,  182, 

220,    239,    244,    247-251,    253, 

260,  307. 
Herder,  J.  F.  von,  57,  250. 
Heywood,  Thomas,  187. 
"History  of  Matthew  Wald,"  Lock- 
hart's,  160. 
"History  of  Portugal,"  Southey's, 

91,  92. 
Hoffmann,  E.  T.  A.,  157. 
Hogg,  James,  72-73,  74,  78,  124- 

126,   127,   133,   139,   146,   151, 

158,  159  (prose),  200,  243,  252, 

271,  275. 
Holcroft,  Thomas,  49. 
Holford,  Margaret,  123,  124. 
Holland,  Lord,  129,  130,  131,  132, 

148,  214. 
Home,  John,  14,  15,  115. 
Homer,  257,  279. 
Hood,  Thomas,  196,  197,  200,  202, 

204,  207,  210,  211,  216,  261,  281, 

282,  283. 
Hope,  Thomas,  246. 
Horace,  31,  135,  256,  258. 
"Horace  in   London,"   James   and 


Horace  Smith's, 


271. 


[  335  ] 


INDEX 


"Horn  of  Egremont  Castle,"  Words- 
worth's, 119. 
Huch,  Ricarda,  236. 
Hugo,  Victor,   11,   157,   164,   235, 

293. 

"Human  Life,"  Rogers's,  135. 

Hunt,  J.  H.  Leigh,  34,  109,  135, 
136,  156,  163,  164,  165,  166,  167, 
168,  169,  170,  171,  172,  173,  176, 
177,  178,  182,  183,  184,  186,  191, 
198,  199,  217,  223,  232,  233,  234, 
23s,  240,  253,  256,  257,  291,  292, 

307- 

Hurd,  Richard,  29. 

"Hymn  Before  Sunrise,"  Cole- 
ridge's, 91,  97. 

"Hymn  to  Intellectual  Beauty," 
Shelley's,  183. 

"Hyperion,"  Keats's,  180,  183,  287, 
296. 

"Imaginary    Conversations,"    Lan- 

dor's,  203,  234,  235. 
"Inscriptions,"  Southey's,  52. 
"Irish  Melodies,"  Moore's,  84,  121, 

139,  140-141. 
Irving,  Washington,  87,   147-148, 

244,  247. 
"Isabella,"  Keats's,  171,  216,  217. 
"Island,"  Byron's,  226. 
"Isle  of  Palms,"  Wilson's,  100. 
"Italian,"  Mrs.  Radcliffe's,  35,  36, 

153,  253- 
"Italy,"   Rogers's,   218,   220,   221, 

262. 
"Ivanhoe,"  Scott's,  154. 

Jamieson,  Robert,  74,  75,  84. 
"Jane  Eyre,"  C.  Bronte's,  35. 
Japp,  A.  H.,  202. 


"Jaspar,"  Southey's,  64.  ' 

Jeffrey,  Francis,  118,  191,  260,  281. 
"Joan  of  Arc,"  Southey's,  60,  61, 

91. 
John  Bully  241. 
"John  Woodvil,"  Lamb's,  47,  60, 

187. 
Johnson,  Samuel,  14,  48,  57,  129, 

185,  259. 
Jonson,  Ben,  187,  191,  192. 
"Joseph  and  His  Brethren,"  Wells's, 

193- 
"Journey     through     France     and 

Italy,"  Hazlitt's,  219. 
"Julian   and   Maddalo,"   Shelley's, 

231. 

"Kabale  und  Liebe,"  Schiller's,  38. 

Kalert,  Friederich,  37. 

Kant,  E.,  189. 

Kean,  Edmund,  198. 

Keats,  John,  12,  34,  120,  129,  143, 
146,  147,  156,  163,  164,  165,  166, 
167,  168,  169,  170,  171,  172,  173, 
174,  176, 178-180, 181, 182, 183, 
184,  199,  208,  216,  217,  220,  235, 
239,  248,  256,  257,  259,  260,  293, 
294,  298,  301,  313,  314,  315- 

Kemble,  John,  198. 

Kilchurn  Castle,  Wordsworth's  son- 
net on,  108. 

"King  Stephen,"  Keats's,  198. 

Klopstock,  F.  G.,  62. 

Kotzebue,  A.  von,  38-39,  41. 

"Kubla  Khan,"  Coleridge's,  63. 

"Lady  of  the  Lake,"  Scott's,  113, 

115,  127,  269. 
Laidlaw,  William,  72,  73,  158. 


[  336  ] 


INDEX 


''Lalla  Rookh,"  Moore's,  144,  147, 

239. 

Lamartine,  A.  de,  19,  251. 

Lamb,  Charles,  45,  46,  47,  49,  52, 
56,  57,  5S,  60,  61,  62,  64,  66,  78, 
loi,  109,  165,  166,  167,  168,  169, 
170,  178,  182,  184,  185,  186,  187, 
188,  189,  192,  195,  197,  198,  200, 
201,  202,  207-208,  210,  211,  241, 
253,  254,  262,  268,  291,  292,  305, 

307- 
Lamb,  Mary,  169,  187,  188. 
"Lament  of  Tasso,"  Byron's,  225. 
"Lamia,"  Keats's,  174,  180,  182. 
Landon,  Letitia,  19,  155,  239,  241, 

251-252,  253,  254,  260,  262,  281, 

307- 
Landor,  Robert  Eyres,  220. 
Landor,  Walter  Savage,  62,  92,  93, 

191,  203,  213,  215,  225,  233- 

236,  238,  287,  307. 
"Laodamia,"    Wordsworth's,     182, 

287. 
"Lara,"  Byron's,  34,  138. 
"Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel,"  Scott's, 

19,  75,  80,  81,  82,  84,  112,  113, 

115,  120,  144. 
"Leech-gatherer,"       Wordsworth's, 

65. 
"Legend  of  Florence,"  Hunt's,  233. 
"Legend  of  Montrose,"  Scott's,  153. 
L.  E.  L.    See  Letitia  Landon. 
Leopardi,  Giacomo,  195. 
Lessing,  G.  E.,  189,  237. 
Lewis,  M.  G.,  33,  35-36,  37,  4i,  56, 

70,  71,  77,  "2,  213,  253,  269, 

270,  271,  281. 
Leyden,  John,  71-72,  74,  76,  77, 

78-81,  85,  87,  88,  146,  151. 


Liberal,  They  232-233. 

"Library,"  Crabbe's,  27. 

"Lights   and   Shadows  of   Scottish 

Life,"  Wilson's,  160. 
"Lines    to    a   Young   Ass,"    Cole- 
ridge's, 270, 
"Lines  Written  Among  the  Euga- 

nean  Hills,"  Shelley's,  229. 
Lloyd,  Charles,  45,  46,  47,  49,  5o, 

52-53,  60,  62,  66,  90,  98-99, 

165,  167,  171,  182,  216,  254,  268. 
Lockhart,  John  Gibson,  70,  74,  93, 

112,  151,  154,  155,  158,160,  161, 

199,  241,  262. 
London  Magazine ,   156,   161,   168, 

186, 195, 196, 198-209,  210,  211, 

240,  246,  254,  260. 
Longfellow,  H.  W.,  115,  161. 
Longman's,  113,  187. 
"Lord  of  the  Isles,"  Scott's,   113, 

122,  143. 
"Lord  Soulis,"  Leyden's,  81. 
Lovell,  Robert,  44,  45,  47,  49,  5o, 

62,  95- 
"Loves   of   the   Angels,"   Moore's, 

147. 
Luttrell,    Henry,    129,    130,    131, 

136-137,  138,  143,  148. 
Lyly,  John,  192. 
"Lyrical     Ballads,"    Wordsworth's 

and  Coleridge's,  20,  24,  39,  51, 

64,  65,  118,  288. 

Macaulay,  Lord,  131,  263. 
Mackenzie,  Henry,  57. 
Mackintosh,  James,  131,  222. 
Macpherson,  James,   14,   15,   153, 
267. 


[  337  ] 


INDEX 


"Madoc,"  Southey's,  45,  61,  62,  91, 

115. 
Maginn,  William,  156,  159. 
Mallet,  P.,  92. 

"Manfred,"  Byron's,  34,  227. 
"Marino  Faliero,"  Byron's,  227. 
Marlowe,  C,   187,  191,   193,  194, 

196,  253. 

"Marmion,"   Scott's,   80,  94,   113, 

114,  IIS,  127,  239,  271. 
Massinger,  P.,  186,  187,  191,  192, 

197,  198. 

Mathias,  Thomas  James,  25,  34. 
Maturin,  Charles  Robert,  42,  252, 

253,  268. 
"Michael,"  Wordsworth's,   63,   65, 

loi,  107,  108. 
Middleton,  Thomas,  192,  198. 
Mill,  John  Stuart,  314. 
Millais,  J.  E.,  182. 
Milman,  H.  H.,  134,  137,  156,  220, 

241,  243-244,  245,  253,  261. 
Milton,  John,  61,  62,  63,  102,  103, 

104,  106,  no,  172,  173,  188,  191, 
212,  217,  223,  296,  297,  304. 

"Minstrelsy  of  the  Scottish  Bor- 
der," Scott's,  70,  71,  72,  73,  74, 
76-79,  84,  112,  114. 

Mitford,  Mary  Russell,  23,  82,  118, 
121,  124,  221,  239,  244,  245,  246, 
263. 

Moir,  David  Macbeth,  160. 

"Monk,"  Lewis's,  35-36. 

Montgomery,  James,  121-122,  127, 

242,  269. 
"Montorio,"  Maturin's,  42. 
Moore,  Thomas,  34,  48,  68,   114, 

121,  130,  132,  133,  134,  136, 
138, 139, 140-141, 145,  147,  148, 


165,  168,  173,  223,  235,  239,  240, 

241,  243,  246,  252,  253,  256,  258, 

260,  270,  281,  ^93,  312. 
Morgan,  Lady  (Sydney  Owenson), 

241. 
Motherwell,  William,  76,  83,  162, 

288. 
"Mountain  Bard,"  Hogg's,  73. 
Murray,  John,  113,  156,  214,  226, 

257- 
"Mysteries  of  Udolpho,"  Mrs.  Rad- 
cliffe's,  34,  36,  268. 

Napoleon  Bonaparte,  116,  163,  213, 

221,  222,  238,  239,  267,  289,  290, 

310. 
"Newspaper,"  Crabbe's,  27. 
"Nightingale,"  Coleridge's,  63. 
"Noctes  Ambrosianae,"   156,  157- 

158. 
"North,    Christopher."     See   John 

Wilson. 
"Northanger  Abbey,'*  Austen's,  268, 

274,  310. 
Northcote,  J.,  166,  259. 
Novalis,  19s,  307,  308. 
Novellos,  the,  165,  167,  169,  170, 

182,  183,  184. 

"Ode  on  Dejection,"  Coleridge's,  91, 

97. 

"Ode  on  Intimations  of  Immortal- 
ity," Wordsworth's,  19,  118,  119. 

"Ode  to  the  West  Wind,"  Shelley's, 
224. 

Oehlenschlager,  A.  G.,  247,  250. 

"Old  Mortality,"  Scott's,  153. 

Oliphant,  Mrs.,  155,  158. 

Oilier,  Chas.,  165,  166,  171. 


[  338  ] 


INDEX 


"On  a  Grecian  Um,"  Keats's,  176, 
180. 

Opie,  Mrs.,  62. 

"Osorio"  ("Remorse"),  Cole- 
ridge's, 54,  60,  134. 

"Ossian,"  30,  32,  33,  141,  146,  212, 
248,  266,  274,  307. 

"Otho  the  Great,"  Keats's,  170, 
198. 

Otway,  Thomas,  186,  197. 

Ovid,  98. 

Owenson,  Sydney.  See  Lady  Mor- 
gan. 

"Parish  Register,"  Crabbe's,  121. 

Pamell,  Thomas,  13,  15. 

Peacock,  Thomas  Love,  167,  177, 
180,  222,  250,  272-275,  283. 

Peele  Castle,  Wordsworth's  poem 
on,  119. 

Peele,  George,  192,  196. 

"Peter  Bell,"  Wordsworth's,  63. 

Petrarch,  F.,  225. 

"Plea  of  the  Midsummer  Fairies," 
Hood's,  196. 

"Pleasures  of  Hope,"  Campbell's, 
30-32,  68,  127. 

"Pleasures  of  Memory,"  Rogers's, 
29-30. 

Poe,  E.  A.,  157. 

Pollok,  Robert,  162. 

Poole,  Thomas,  45,  47,  50,  58. 

Pope,  Alexander,  13,  14,  15,  22,  23, 
30,  31,  32,  57,  80,  9^,  114,  128, 
129,  134,  13s,  138,  142,  148,  170, 
172,  173,  184,212,214,254,255, 
256,  257,  258,  259,  260,  266,  267, 
269,  276,  291,  292,  29s,  296,  297, 
300,  315. 


Porter,  Jane,  85,  282. 

Praed,  Winthrop  Mackworth,  262, 

282-283. 
"Prelude,"  Wordsworth's,  50,  109, 

313- 
Pre-Raphaelites,  169,  182,  183,  237, 

303. 

"Prince  Athanase,"  Shelley's,  224. 

Prior,  Matthew,  23,  128,  136,  276. 

"Probationary  Odes  for  the  Laure- 
ateship,"  266. 

Procter,  Bryan  Waller  ("Barry 
Cornwall"),  34,  102,  132,  134, 
156,  165,  167,  168,  170,  171,  173, 
174,  177,  178,  182,  184,  188,  189, 
190-192,  193,  197,  198,  200, 
208,  216,  217,  218,  225,  239,  240, 

251,  253. 
"Prometheus  Unbound,"  Shelley's, 

181,  229,  232. 
"Prophecy  of  Dante,"  Byron's,  223. 
Pulci,  L.,  215,  216,  233. 

Quarterly  Review,   156,   172,   184, 

203,  244,  248,  254,  255. 
"Queen  Hynde,"  Hogg's,  151. 
"Queen  Mab,"  Shelley's,  180. 
"Queen's  Wake,"  Hogg's,  124-126. 
"Quentin  Durward,"  Scott's,  154. 

Racine,  Jean,  98,   129,   132,   135, 

228,  291. 
Radcliffe,  Mrs.  Ann,  33-35,  36,  42, 

82,  89,  152,  180,  213,  252,  268, 

274,  282,  310. 
Ramsay,  Allan,  13,  154. 
"Rauber,  Die,"  Schiller's,  37,  38, 

54,  92. 
"Recluse,"  Wordsworth's,  104-106. 


[  339  ] 


INDEX 


Reflector,  Hunt's,  i66. 
"Rejected  Addresses,"   James  and 
Horace  Smith's,   i66,  266,  269, 

275. 
"Reliques,"  Percy's,  14,  56,  64,  68, 

75,  76,  274. 
"Remorse,"  Coleridge's.  See  Osorio. 
"Revolt  of  Islam,"  Shelley's,   171, 

313- 
Reynolds,  John  Hamilton,  165,  166, 

167,  168,  170,  171,  172,  174,  178, 
182,  198,  200,  201,  217,  281,  282. 

"Rhododaphne,"  Peacock's,  177. 

Richter,  J.  P.,  144. 

Ritson,  Joseph,  73. 

Robinson,  Henry  Crabb,  57,  94, 
213. 

"Rob  Roy,"  Scott's,  153. 

"Roderick,"  Southey's,  92,  loi,  117, 

^  134. 

Rogers,  Samuel,  27,  28,  29,  48,  68, 
,|9,  112,  117,  124,  129,  130,  132- 
133, 134, 135, 138, 139, 142, 143, 
147,  148,  168,  173,  198,  219,  223, 
258,259,261,281,297,310,311. 

"Rokeby,"  Scott's,  80,  113,  120, 
122,  126. 

"Rolliad,  The,"  24. 

Roscoe,  William,  255. 

Rousseau,  Jean- Jacques,  33,  44,  51, 
52,  54,  70,  89,  100,  268,  274. 

"Rovers,"  Canning's,  40,  41,  214. 

"Ruined  Cottage,"  Southey's,  52. 

Runge,  O.,  308. 

Ruskin,  John,  182,  183. 


St.  Pierre,  J.  H.  B.,  33. 
"St.   Ronan's  Well,"  Scott's,   154, 
242. 


Sand,  George,  276,  310. 

Schiller,  J.  C.  F.,  37,  143,  177,  237. 

Schlegel,  A.  W.  von,  37,  177,  189, 
222,  223,  289,  290,  291. 

Scott,  John,  199,  200,  202,  209. 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  15,  24,  34,  37,  41, 
48,  69-82,  87,  88,  93,  94,  103, 
no,  112-117,  120,  121,  122, 
123,  125,  126, 127,  131,  132,  133, 
135,  139,  142,  143, 144,  145,  146, 
148,  151,  152-155,  156,  158, 
162, 163, 168,  184, 197,  208,  209, 
219,  239,  240,  241,  242,  246,  247, 
258,  259,  260,  262,  263,  269,  270, 
282,  287,  288, 289,  290, 292,  293, 
299,  301,  303,  306,  310,  312, 
316. 

Severn,  Joseph,  165,  166,  167,  168, 
169,  171,  173,  176,  178,  183,  184, 

245. 

Seward,  Anna,  23,  24,  26,  32,  77. 

"Shade  of  Alexander  Pope,  The," 
26. 

Shakespeare,  William,  173,  186, 
188,  189,  191,  192,  193,  196,  197, 
198,  212,  218,  223,  229,  281,  298. 

Sharp,  William,  176. 

Shelley,  Mary,  170,  231,  233. 

Shelley,  Percy  Bysshe,  12,  19,  34, 
80,  89,  92,  103,  116,  120,  143, 
146,  147,  156,  163,  164,  165,  167, 
168,  169,  170,  171,  172,  176,  178, 
180-181,  182,  183,  184,  192, 
193, 198,  213,  220,  223-225,  227, 
228-231,  232,  234,  235,  238, 
239,  241,  248,  251,  254,  260,  272, 
274,  281,  293,  301,  302,  303,  308, 
312,  315. 

Sheridan,  R.  B.,  39,  130,  288. 


[  340  ] 


INDEX 


Shirley,  James,  196. 

Siddons,  Mrs.,  198. 

"Simon  Lee,"  Wordsworth's,  65. 

"Sleep  and  Poetry,"  Keats's,  174. 

Smith,  Adam,  30. 

Smith,  Charlotte,  20,  21,  116. 

Smith,  James  and  Horace,  165,  166, 
201,  269,  271. 

Smollett,  T.  G.,  185. 

"Solitary  Reaper,"  Wordsworth's, 
86. 

"Song  at  the  Feast  of  Brougham 
,Castle,"  Wordsworth's,  108,  119. 

"Sorrows  of  Werther,"  Goethe's, 
144,  228,  262,  274. 

Sotheby,  William,  123,  221. 

Southey,  Robert,  15,  23,  38,  43,  44, 
45,  46,  47,  48,  49,  50,  51,  54,  55- 
56,  58,  59,  60-62,  64,  66,  78,  86, 
89,  90,  91-95,  98,  102,  113,  118, 
122, 131, 134,  144, 161, 180,  187, 
212,  213,  215,  216,  234,  240,  258, 
260, 261, 268,  269,  270,  271,  275, 
277,  281,  301,  307,  312. 

"Specimens  of  English  Dramatic 
Poets,"  etc..  Lamb's,  187. 

Spencer,  W.  R.,  39,  130,  131,  i33, 
135,  138,  139,  148,  270. 

Spenser,  Edmund,  153,  iji,  i23, 
175,  218,  2^3,  28i,*293,  226,  2^8, 

307-  *" 

Stevenson,  Robert  L.,  83,  158. 
"Stories  from  the  Italian  Poets," 

Hunt's,  233. 
"Story   of   Rimini,"   Hunt's,    171, 

173,  174,  223,  233,  256. 
Swedenborg,  Emanuel,  118. 
Swift,  Jonathan,  114,  128,  258,  272, 

276,  277,  279,  280. 


Swinburne,  A.  C,  178,  183,  265. 
Symons,  Arthur,  296,  297,  298. 

"Tales  from  Blackwood,"  156-157, 

253- 
"Tales  from  Shakespeare,"  Charles 

and  Mary  Lamb's,  187. 
"Tales  of  Wonder,"  Lewis's,  56,  70. 
Talfourd,  Sir  Thomas  Noon,  167, 

199,  201,  209. 
"Talisman,"  Scott's,  154,  155. 
"Task,"  Cowper's,  21,  89. 
Tasso,  T.,  225,  233,  234. 
Taylor,  William,  24,  55,  56,  62,  69, 

213- 
Tennyson,  Lord,  15,  116,  182,  263, 

292,  295,  296,  303. 
Thackeray,  William  Makepeace,  34, 

159,  267,  272,  283. 
"Thalaba,"  Southey's,  61,  91,  313. 
Thelwall,  John,  46,  47,  50,  58,  268. 
Thomson,  James,  14,  15,  26,  84,  85, 

198,  212,  307. 
"Three  Graves,"  Coleridge's,  63,  64. 
Thurlow,  Lord,  220. 
Tieck,  L.,  253,  307. 
"Tintem  Abbey,  Lines  Composed 

above,"  Wordsworth's,  53,  81. 
Toumeur,  C,  187. 
"Triumph  of  Life,"  Shelley's,  224. 
"Triumphs  of  Temper,"  Hayley's, 

22. 
Turner,  J.  M.,  220. 
"Two  Foscari,"  Byron's,  227. 

Uhland,  J.  L.,  115. 

"Urania,"  W.  R.  Spencer's,  39,  139. 


[  341  ] 


INDEX 


"Vala,"  Blake's,  313. 

"Veiled    Prophet    of    Khorassan," 

Moore's,  173. 
Veitch,  G.  S.,  73,  83,  84,  85. 
"Village,"  Crabbe's,  27-28. 
"Vision  of  Judgment,"  Byron's,  215, 

233. 
Vitet,  L.,  191. 
Voltaire,  F.  M.  A.  de,  30,  132,  256. 

Wade,  Thomas,  196,  220,  221. 
"Waggoner,"  Wordsworth's,  119. 
Wainwright,  T.  G.,  201. 
"Wallenstein,"  Coleridge's,  41. 
Walpole,  Horace,  24,  36. 
Warton,  Joseph,  34,  254,  258. 
Warton,  Thomas,   14,  20,  29,  33, 

48,  49,  82,  115,  208,  267,  288, 

296,  300. 
Watchman,  Coleridge's,  45. 
Watier's,  130. 

"Wat  Tyler,"  Southey's,  50. 
"Waverley,"  Scott's,  151,  152. 
Webb,   Cornelius,    156,    165,    170, 

171. 
Weber,  Veit,  37. 
Webster,  John,  187,  191,  192,  194, 

196,  197,  242. 
Wedgewood  brothers,  66. 
Wells,  C.  J.,  165,   167,  177,   178, 

182,  192,  193,  197,  217,  245. 
Werner,  Z.,  237,  253. 


West,  Benjamin,  244,  245. 

White,  Lydia,  131. 

"White  Doe  of  Rylstone,"  Words- 
worth's, 103,  108,  113,  119,  120. 

Wilson,  J.  G,,  13,  74. 

Wilson,  John  ("Christopher 
North"),  87,  90,  100-101,  152, 
156,  157,  153,  159,  160,  161,  185, 
272. 

"Witch  of  Atlas,"  Shelley's,  216, 
220. 

Woodhouselee,  Lord,  37,  54. 

Wordsworth,  Dorothy,  47,  53,  62, 
96,  100,  loi,  102,  113. 

Wordsworth,  William,  13,  15,  22, 
23,  24,  27,  40,  42,  45,  46,  47,  48, 
49,  SO,  51,  52,  53-54,  56,  57,  58, 
59,  62,  63-66,  68,  81,  85,  86,  87, 
88,  89,  90,  91,  94,  95,  96,  97,  98, 
99,  100,  101-111,  113,  114,  "5, 
116, 117-120, 122, 129, 132, 134, 
138, 139, 143, 148, 151, 152, 156, 
158, 163, 182,  184, 191, 197, 198, 
204,  207,  209,  210,  212,  213,  219, 
222,  234,  240,  255,  258,  259,  260, 
261,  263,  269,  270,  271,  272,  288, 
289,  290,  291,  292,  293,  297,  298, 
301,  302,  303,  307,  308,  311,  312, 
313,  314. 

"World  Before  the  Flood,"  Mont- 
gomery's, 242. 

"Zapolya,"  Coleridge's,  188. 


[  342  ] 


^. 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 

Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


RECEIVED 


JUN    2'67-2PIVI 


MAR  4    1975  34 


EEC  ciB.  ra  >>''' 


r^mh 


APR  0  7  2(107 


LD  21A-60m-2,'67 
(H241slO)476B 


General  Library 

University  of  Californij 

Berkeley 


J 


YC  60572 


*-4V-.  .. 


;.  -1 


